ALL IN…
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1 When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.
2 And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting.
3 And there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them.
4 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance.
ALL IN
ALL IN
Explain authorship of Luke-Acts & Theopolis
So in order to get to Pentecost Sunday, you first must go back to where Luke left off..
At this point they are still called disciples. They aren’t called apostles yet.
44 Now He said to them, “These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.”
45 Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures,
46 and He said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day,
47 and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
48 “You are witnesses of these things.
Recap where the disciples are: post crucifixion, Jesus starts appearing to the disciples over a period of 40 days.
And here at the end of Luke, the disciples are afraid when Jesus appears to them thinking he was a ghost.
These men were shaken to the core by the events of the crucifixion and it takes a supernatural revelation for them to understand what Jesus was saying.
Then we flip over to Acts and find this:
1 The first account I composed, Theophilus, about all that Jesus began to do and teach,
2 until the day when He was taken up to heaven, after He had by the Holy Spirit given orders to the apostles whom He had chosen.
The difference in the view on the disciples as apostles between Luke and Acts most probably represents the separation in time when the two were written.
Luke was written much earlier before all these things in Acts had complete, but now Luke was writing a second volume about what happened after Jesus ascended through the men once called disciples, but now called apostles.
… after He had by the Holy Spirit given orders to the APOSTLES whom He had chosen.
Luke has the benefit of writing Acts after having witnessed much of it himself.
He can be bold in referring to them as APOSTLES because he is writing from a time when they are revered as such, but at the time, they still considered themselves disciples…
They were still followers. They didn’t consider themselves leaders yet. They still needed Jesus!
In many ways, being a follower is easier because you have someone telling you what you should and shouldn’t do, but when you’re a leader you have to do some critical thinking and figure out what God is telling YOU.
It’s one thing when you are learning and consuming the scriptures, it is a whole other line of thinking when you realize that their responsibility didn’t stop there…
As disciples of Jesus, they were also under instruction to make more disciples…
In much the same way as each of the Gospels share a different perspective on the same stories, so the author of Luke-Acts chooses to share a different perspective on those same days:
3 To these He also presented Himself alive after His suffering, by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over a period of forty days and speaking of the things concerning the kingdom of God.
4 Gathering them together, He commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the Father had promised, “Which,” He said, “you heard of from Me;
5 for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
So He gives them the what, but not the why and just as the author of Luke-Acts was giving them the credit of being Apostles they go and ask a question like this:
6 So when they had come together, they were asking Him, saying, “Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?”
After all they have seen… After the 40 days Jesus appeared to them… After having followed Him and learned under His teaching for some over 3 years… Still they don’t see the full picture..
*Makes me feel better…
So Jesus answers the question they should have asked:
7 He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority;
8 but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.”
Now He has given them the why…
The WHY behind the baptism in the Holy Spirit…
In fact, it is often this very WHY that is overlooked or flat out ignored…
How often we get into discussions about evidence rather than intent…
We would rather squabble about how we know you’ve been baptized in the Holy Spirit than to see the realization of WHY you should be baptized in the Holy Spirit…
Can I say it more succinctly: Baptism in the Holy Spirit is not to give you the ability to speak in unknown tongues!
That’s just the side effect… That is the evidence… The WHY behind the baptism in the Holy Spirit is given directly from Jesus in these verses:
8 but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.”
You will receive power and BE MY WITNESSES…
This is the why… to be a witness!
I’m like Paul when he says, 1 Corinthians 14:5 “5 Now I wish that you all spoke in tongues, but even more that you would prophesy”
According to the Assemblies of God Constitution and Bylaws:
All believers are entitled to and should ardently expect and earnestly seek the promise of the Father, the baptism in the Holy Ghost and fire, according to the command of our Lord Jesus Christ. This was the normal experience of all in the early Christian church. With it comes the enduement of power for life and service, the bestowment of the gifts and their uses in the work of the ministry (Luke 24:49; Acts 1:4,8; 1 Corinthians l2:1-3l).
We believe in tongues. We believe tongues is the evidence of baptism in the Holy Spirit, but the reason for that baptism is power for life and service… BE MY WITNESSES.
I imagine the disciples who had not yet been declared as Apostles felt much as we do today in the face of the upcoming discipleship process…
You want us to do what!?
We are used to following. We are used to listening and hearing and consuming.
We will even pray for people on occasion, but to actually make other disciples?
We don’t feel like we are qualified for that. We don’t feel like we can do that they way Jesus did it!
Why don’t you just stay and restore the kingdom to Israel?
Surely you don’t need us to do this when you are so much better at it?
Why would he use me to do this when there are other ways to make disciples that don’t include using someone like me?
I’m not sure what I will say!
I can’t think on my feet like that!
I don’t know the Word well enough…
Don’t I need a degree for that?
But Jesus’ response was: Wait for the promise… Your help is coming.
I’m not leaving you ill-equipped. You shall receive POWER.
These are the same men asking if Jesus will stay… These are the same men who still consider themselves followers rather than leaders…
These are the same men who even after the explanation from Jesus stare into heaven long enough that angels have to show up and snap them out of their stupor:
9 And after He had said these things, He was lifted up while they were looking on, and a cloud received Him out of their sight.
10 And as they were gazing intently into the sky while He was going, behold, two men in white clothing stood beside them.
11 They also said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven.”
These are the men, who have to be walked along and instructed in each step, often rebuked and corrected…
But not just the men…
12 Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day’s journey away.
13 When they had entered the city, they went up to the upper room where they were staying; that is, Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas the son of James.
14 These all with one mind were continually devoting themselves to prayer, along with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with His brothers.
Mary carried the divine twice…
1 When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.
2 And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting.
3 And there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them.
4 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance.
We need a fresh wind… We need a fresh fire…
We need the Holy Spirit if we are to accomplish that which God has laid out for us!
If I gather anything about these who followed Jesus we call disciples it is that they were as any of us…
They were not the most qualified…
They were not the most educated…
They did not have prestige or influence when they began…
All they had was the Holy Spirit and FIRE.
No matter what our effort..
No matter what God is leading us to do…
No matter how different or challenging…
We must be led by the Holy Spirit and empowered by FIRE..
THIS IS WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE TO BE ALL IN…
ALL IN
ALL IN
It is not that they did not face doubts, but that they were empowered by the Holy Spirit.
Over the next few weeks we will be walking through the accounts in the book of Acts examining what fueled the first century church.
The first century church was unique in the history of the church.
We will see what it was like when the church was ALL IN and we will learn how we can show that same dedication in our own lives.
This is what I know… Jesus insisted that the disciples wait for the Holy Spirit to come in power and fire…
They required the Holy Spirit’s baptism in the first century and if we are to live as they lived with the dedication they had, we too must be ALL IN, starting with the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
Altar Call
Salvation
Baptism in the HS
