Come Holy Spirit!

Message Title: Come Holy Spirit!

Message Series: The Great I Am (#16)

Text: Acts 2:1-12

Date: Sunday, May 31, 2020

Welcome

Good morning CCVers and all of you joining us this morning for our weekly Livestream worship gathering! We are delighted that you've found us online. Let me encourage you to let us know you’re with us this morning by leaving a comment on Facebook, Youtube, or on our CCV Website. If you’re following on Youtube or Facebook, please be sure to “like” this video and share it with others as well. That’s a great way to help this broadcast show up more often in other people's news feed, and expose them to who we are and what we’re all about. During this pandemic era, this has literally become the front door of our church.

In addition, if you’re visiting with us and not a regular attender of our worship gatherings, we also have an online Connection Card available for you. We’d love to be able to follow up on your visit with us today, if you’ll just take a moment to fill that card out online and submit it. You can find it at HYPERLINK "ccvine.org/connect" ccvine.org/connect.

2020 Vision Recap

This year (2020) CCV aims to get positioned for greatness

in the kingdom of God by embracing the mindset of humility

and the actions of servanthood that Jesus exemplified for us.

Intro to Worship

Worship Set: Micah D.

Congregational Prayer: Kevin

Children's Message: Lydia

Scripture Reading: Acts 2:1-12

When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.

Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”

Message Intro/Review:

My friends, for the sake of time this morning, because we have some very important things to get to, I’m going to dispense with my typical message intro and get right to the point… the one single point that we need to focus our attention on this morning. Let me offer you a brief meditation, not a full message, because we have some important stories we need to get to. So my hope and aim in the next few moments is to simply set the stage.

I saw a tweet from someone yesterday that put it quite well. She said:

“If thousands of people around the nation are going to violate the stay at home orders to go out and riot, then I’m certainly not staying home from church any longer."

Message Point 1: If we truly want the fire of the Spirit’s presence and power to touch and fill our lives and heal our nation, the church needs to be together before the Lord like never before.

Ref. Acts 2:1. When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place.

We all know what happened on the day of Pentecost right? The Holy Spirit was poured out upon the church, and the whole world was never the same. But what led up to that?

The church - that is the people of God - was together in one place.

Where were they? They were at the Temple in Jerusalem, literally and physically. But I want to suggest to you that the phrase “together in one place” runs deeper than that. I believe it also speaks of unity and focus that God was eager to bless with his presence and power.

Both are important: If we want the fire of the Holy Spirit to take the place of the fires of rioting and vandalism, then we too need to be “together in one place”, both physically and spiritually.

We need to be meeting together in one place again. And we need to meeting together with a renewed focus and unity before the Lord.

Our Default Setting: Meeting together as the church is valuable and fruitful in our lives… for this reason, we have committed to meeting weekly on Sunday mornings for almost 20 years now. We do this in the larger Biblical and historical tradition of churches meeting together weekly for almost 2000 years.

Why Do Churches meet together? They meet to celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus, to honor the Sabbath principle, to worship the Lord together, study his Word together, and to encourage one another in love. In essence, they meet - and we meet - to come together for the purpose and practices of deepening our relationships with God and with one another. Perhaps there are other reasons to, but those are the biggest ones.

Meeting together is historically, the primary way that the Biblical functions of the church have been carried out.

In other words, our normal routine/commitment is to meet weekly. So in our case, for nearly 20 years CCV has met 52 times a year except due to extraordinary circumstances in which the risk of meeting outweighs the value of meeting.

If you do the math, that's almost 1000 meetings that this church has hosted.

When do we cancel?

If there is a winter storm warning or we've had a serious winter storm, and the roads are too icy for people to travel safely, we have canceled our worship gathering.

If the electricity is out we have canceled our worship gathering.

If there were a tornado warning (but not a watch) we would cancel our worship gathering.

So personal safety is a risk factor that we consider.

Notice that in every case, we have only canceled our meetings when we have perceived there is a greater risk to people's safety than the value of holding the meeting.

But otherwise, come rain or snow, we meet together.

That is, until 2 months ago, when we entered an international pandemic and our Governor declared a State of Emergency and mandated that everyone stay home.

Here again, for the last 8 weeks now, we have not met together in person, largely for the sake of safety. We agreed together that the risk was simply too high to take, and for the sake of minimizing that risk we met virtually online instead of in person.

As we’ve considered meeting again, our Council and Leadership team have been focused on three essential questions:

Is it safe enough to meet again? Ie. Has the risk factor decreased enough for us to come together?

Is it legal to meet again? Ie. Are we honoring those in authority that God has placed over us?

What is God speaking to us? What do his Word and his Spirit have to say to us about what we should do?

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What are the Biblical & theological values that might keep us from meeting?

Loving concern and deference for those who fear getting and/or spreading the virus.

Any specific prohibition by guidance from the Spirit of the Lord.

The potential for negative impressions on the East Lansing community in light of our missional focus.

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What are the Biblical & theological values that should inspire us to meet together again?

Loving concern and sensitivity for those who are struggling with loneliness, discouragement,... those who need fellowship and connection now more than ever.

Any specific permission by guidance from the Spirit of the Lord.

The Biblical Mandate and Church Tradition to meet whenever possible.

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**Ref. Hebrews 10:23-25.**Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

Now, beyond that, I believe there are two more reasons for meeting together again that the Lord has given us, which also provide us with the renewed and united focus we need to press into.

The Power of united prayer and worship... our nation is in a world of hurt right now... it needs the church to pray and minister peace like never before. Ephesians 6 Warfare paradigm. We are in a season of intense spiritual warfare over our nations future. What does it mean and look like for the church to “take our stand” against the enemy’s schemes? It requires being together before the Lord like never before.

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Ref. Ephesians 6:10-20. Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows *of the evil one.*Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people. Pray also for me, that whenever I speak, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should.

The Timing and Draw of Meeting for Pentecost as an expression of our absolute dependence on and need for the Holy Spirit’s power in this season.

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What is Pentecost? It's a Harvest Festival, observed in Judaism as Shavuot, celebrating the firstfruits of the summer wheat harvest.

Pentecost means weeks. So there is a countdown that begins on the Spring Feast of Firstfruits (that is Resurrection Day!) and continues for 7 weeks, or 50 days until the Sunday of the Summer Firstfruits Festival. Notice that this is the 7th Sunday…. So there are seven seven’s. Biblically, that numerology represents God’s perfect timing, or the fullness of time.

In other words, this is a sacred day on God's Holy Calendar, and it has been for 5000 years.

In the Vineyard, we are Pentecostals. That is, we believe in the necessity of being empowered and gifted by the Holy Spirit for Kingdom Ministry.

But the presence of the Spirit is not given just for our own personal benefit. It’s given for the benefit and blessing of the whole world…. Which means every tribe and tongue… every race and ethnicity. It’s God’s reversal of the division that took place at the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11.

So then, to sum up my thoughts and meditations, what has become even more obvious over the last several days is that our nation is in a world of hurt and division right now. We are racially divided. We are politically divided. We are generationally divided. We are spiritually divided.

Do you remember what Jesus said about the enemy’s work? He said “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”

That means the need of the hour is for the church to unite and seek the power of the Spirit like never before.

We need to unite around the cause of righteousness and justice being restored to our nation, which is a work of the Spirit. It can’t happen any other way. That’s my friends, is the real reason we need to come together before the Lord and seek the power of the Holy Spirit like never before.

With that in mind, I’ve invited a special guest and friend to come and speak to us this morning.

His name is Alex Pickens, and he currently serves as one of our local missionaries in the role of Chaplain to the Lansing Police Department.

I felt prompted by the Lord to do this, and just called Alex yesterday, in light of all that has transpired in our nation this week since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis a few days ago.

Alex, I believe, has a unique ability to speak to us about what happening for several reasons.

First, and most importantly, he’s a true brother in Christ, with several years of serving in pastoral ministry.

Secondarily, as an African American Alex has a unique ability to speak to us about the problem of racial injustice, and how it was demonstrated so vividly in the death of George Floyd.

And finally, as a Chaplain to the Lansing Police Dept., Alex also has a unique ability to speak to us about the issue of respect and honor for the law, and for those tasked with enforcing the law… our local police officers.

In other words, Alex embodies, and therefore carries a unique ability to speak to and from all sides of the divisions that have erupted in our nation over the last few days and our desperate need to seek the Spirit’s power to heal those divisions.

With that, let’s welcome Alex warmly, and thank him for being willing to share his heart with us about some things that I’m sure are very raw right now.

Let’s pray.

Important Reminders/Announcements:

Pentecost Meeting at Shekinah Intl. Church, 6pm tonight featuring three prophetic voices from MI

Jesus Parties/Grill & Chill resume on Weds. June 10. 6:30pm at Shoemaker’s house.

Prayer Focus for May - Family Ministry & Lydia DeMass

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Benediction:

The Aaronic Blessing from Numbers 6:24-26

"The Lord bless you and keep you;

The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you;

The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace."

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HYPERLINK "https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+1%3A29-34&version=NIV" https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+1%3A29-34&version=NIV

#evernote