Filled to Overflowing!

/ / Happy Pentecost Sunday!

First of all I want to apologize to those of you who join us online. We had a technical glitch last week and the recording stopped half way through the service. I am so sorry for that. And unfortunately we do not have a recording of the part that was missed. But through what you did hear, and what we will be talking about today, you’ll get it!

Last week we talked about / / The Promise of the Holy Spirit. The fact that we have received the Holy Spirit, and that happened when we made a decision to believe in Jesus Christ. It’s not a two step process, but a singular event. When you believe, you receive.

I’m going to be honest with you, I don’t know how many times I have read through some of these scriptures, but this was a big realization for me over these last few weeks. And this goes to show you that how we are taught can build a framework for what we believe, until we are taught something new, or until what we have learned, that is incorrect, is corrected. See, we are not waiting to RECEIVE the Holy Spirit. Not ever, as Christians, do we need to wait to receive the Holy Spirit. He is the seal placed on us that identifies us as believers, as those who will inherit eternal life BECAUSE of our Faith in Jesus Christ.

We read Ephesians 1:13-14 last week, / / And when you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom he promised long ago. The Spirit is God’s guarantee that he will give us the inheritance he promised and that he has purchased us to be his own people.

Not will purchase.

Not will guarantee

Not will give.

But has given, has guaranteed, already did purchase!

2 Corinthians 1:22 says, / / …he has identified us as his own by placing the Holy Spirit in our hearts as the first installment that guarantees everything he has promised us.

Two incredibly important points in those verses.

/ / God GAVE us the Holy Spirit.

Past Tense - You HAVE received. Whether you feel it, recognize it, experience it or not. IF you believe, you have received. You have been sealed. Ephesians 1:13, 2 Corinthians 1:22

/ / The Holy Spirit is a GUARANTEE of what is to come.

What’s to come? Eternal life. So we have now, in full, the Holy Spirit, who is our guarantee of eternal life.

What we just read in Ephesians 1 is such a beautiful statement. If you are reading along with our Daily Bible Reading plan you just read it yesterday. And if you aren’t, can I please please encourage you to do this. There is such good stuff every day. It’ll cause you to wrestle with your faith and pursue God for understanding, and ask him for revelation. It’s so good.

OK, yesterday we started reading the book of Ephesians. And Paul in his letters to the early churches is often times saying much of the same things over and over again because all of these new Christians need to be hearing the same thing. So, in Ephesians 1:14 which is very similar to what we just read in 2 Corinthians 1:22, Paul writes, / / The Spirit is God’s guarantee that he will give us the inheritance he promised… BUT he says a few verses later, in vs 18, / / I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the confident hope he has given to those he called - his holy people who are HIS rich and glorious inheritance.

WE are HIS inheritance. HE is OUR inheritance! WOW!!!

Talk about the perfect unity. The perfect love relationship. If this were a wedding ceremony all the people would be like, “AWWW.....honey did you hear that? She said, “You’re my inheritance..” And he said, “No baby, YOU are MY inheritance...” Isn’t that just so sweet and perfect?!?!?!?!

So, The Holy Spirit chooses to forever be joined to us. He’s our guarantee, our seal, our mark that identifies us as God’s own people and Jesus said HE WILL NOT LEAVE.

And so that begs the question, / / What is Pentecost Sunday?

First of all, you always need to remember to read scripture in context. We are living 2000 years AFTER this moment. They are living IN that moment. They are going THROUGH it. And sometimes what happens in the bible is because of a different time, or a different scenario than the time that we live in.

So, the events surrounding Pentecost Sunday are different than the events surrounding our time period. There is this major transition happening in the early church. First of all, the church didn’t even exist before this. They were simply just following Jesus, his disciples, which there were more than we really talk about. We talk often about the 12 who followed closely, and when we think about who Jesus went to see after he was resurrected, I think we can imagine easily the 11 that were left, right, Judas, having betrayed Jesus actually went and hung himself. But 1 Corinthians 15:6 says that after Jesus had been resurrected, and was revealed to the disciples for 40 days, it says, ...he was seen by more than 500 of his followers at one time...

Followers, disciples, Jesus had a pretty big church!

And so the context here, and this major transition is impacting people in very different ways. / / First, you have a group of people that saw Jesus on earth, alive, and while he was alive they chose to believe in him.

/ / Second, you have another group of people who saw the resurrected Jesus, on earth, re-alive, and were followers. And that’s really a sub-group of that first group. Not all of Jesus’ disciples saw him after the resurrection, but some, at least 500, did.

Now, on top of those groups you have other groups of people involved as well.

The / / third group of people saw Jesus on the earth, alive, but at the time did NOT believe, but now, through the testimony of the disciples who DID see him resurrected, they are choosing to believe.

And a / / fourth group who have never seen Jesus alive, or re-alive…they’re hearing about him for the first time from you someone who DID see him, or someone who didn’t see him. And it’s ONLY that group leads all the way up to today. Right? Everyone who hears about Jesus today is hearing about him from someone who has not seen alive Jesus, or resurrected Jesus.

And of course, I guess there’s a / / fifth group of people that didn’t believe while he was alive, and didn’t believe after he died and didn’t believe after he was resurrected. And those are a lot of the Religious leaders that make trouble for the early church that we read about in the New Testament from the book of Acts on onward.

So, / / Pentecost Sunday is this transition point that the whole Bible has been talking about. The Old Testament scriptures talked of a time when God would pour out his spirit on ALL flesh. And Jesus has talked about it often as well. He’s said multiple times there will be a moment where God would send the Holy Spirit, or that he would leave and when he did HE would send the Holy Spirit. This transition Point of the Holy Spirit becoming available to the believer in a very new way. It hasn’t happened like this before.

I mentioned last week that in the Old Testament you see that the Holy Spirit would come upon people, often times for just a moment, for a specific task. But there was no permanent, what we would call “indwelling” of th Holy Spirit choosing to take up residence in someone. That didn’t happen. Even with King David, in today’s Daily Bible Reading, in 1 Samuel 16:13, it says that when Samuel anointed David to be king, / / ...the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day forward. And that word means to push forward, to advance to make prosper. So the Spirit of the Lord worked in Davids life to advance him, to move him forward, but he did not have the Holy Spirit IN him.

Pentecost Sunday IS the transition point. Jesus has been crucified AND raised from the dead, revealed himself to the disciples, which proves that He IS the Messiah, He is who He said He is, the Son of God, one with the Father, and so when He said in John 14:16-17, / / I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, who will never leave you. He is the Holy Spirit. He is speaking of a new era, the fulfillment of the promise of the Holy Spirit that has been talked about all through the Bible.

OK, and that passage of scripture, those two little verses, are super important.

First of all, Jesus says he will give ANOTHER advocate. Meaning - / / 1. Jesus is the first advocate. Jesus was the comforter, counselor, friend, all those things we talked about last week that the Holy Spirit is, Jesus was to his disciples on earth. And that makes sense, doesn’t it? God is our comfort. God is our counsel. God is our refuge and strength. The Psalms are FULL of the character of God expressed to us. If God shows up in person, this is what you will experience. If God shows up in Spirit, this is what you will experience. Like we said last week. The Trinity is God in 3 persons, but all God. So, when the bible sways God is love. That’s true of the Father, the Son & the Holy Spirit. When we read that God is Almighty. That is true of the Father, Son & Holy Spirit. SO when we talk about encountering the Holy Spirit, we are not just encountering the unique qualities and characteristics of the Spirit of God, but we are filled with the very nature of God in the full. They are separate and yet inseparable.

And the Second important note from John 14:16 is that Jesus says of the / / 2. Holy Spirit, ...[he] will never leave you.

Jesus has already talked about the fact that he will have to leave. And these disciples know the scriptures well. They know the stories of Moses, and Sampson, King Saul and King David, all of the Old Testament Prophets who would experience the Spirit of God for only a moment. And Jesus didn’t hide that fact from his followers that He wasn’t sticking around. He was very open about that fact, even though 99% of the time they really had no clue what he was talking about, they didn’t understand what he was saying, he wasn’t hiding that fact.

So he says, This new advocate, who will replace me, because I have to leave, he will NEVER leave. Now it makes sense why Paul talks about being sealed with the Holy Spirit with such confidence. God marked us with the Holy Spirit! And he is not leaving!

And then vs 17, Jesus says, / / He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth. The world cannot receive him, because it isn’t looking for him and doesn’t recognize him. But you know him, because he lives with you now and later will be IN YOU.

3. The Holy Spirit is IN YOU!

Alright, he lives WITH you now. Jesus is directing their attention to himself. Matthew 3:16, / / After his baptism, as Jesus came up out of the water, the heavens were opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and settling on him.

So, Jesus has walked with the Holy Spirit on earth throughout his ministry, and the disciples have been witness to that, although, again, they don’t always get it.

Jesus is saying to them, You know the Holy Spirit because he’s been right here with you, through me. All that I’ve done I do because of the power of the Holy Spirit. He’s identifying that they know the Spirit of God, the Advocate, because all this time he’s been right there with them.

And so the promise is, listen, just as you saw the Spirit of God descend on me, and has not left me, so too, in time, when I am gone, the Father and I will send the Holy Spirit to you, and he will not leave you. And the reason that is so important is because up until that point their understanding of the Spirit of God would be that he does leave. He doesn’t stick around. There was no indwelling of the Spirit. And Jesus finishes vs 17, / / But you do know him, because he lives with you now and later will be IN YOU.

This is all a part of that transition.

See, they are walking with Jesus, following the man, on this earth. This is not the resurrected King of Kings, this is the lamb who is being led to the slaughter. But for us, when we believe we receive the Holy Spirit at that point of belief. We don’t have to go through that transition period of alive Jesus, dead Jesus, resurrected Jesus. We only have the resurrected Jesus to contend with here. Jesus tells them, I have to leave, but it’s better that I go away, because if I do go away I can send the Holy Spirit. Transition. Jesus Leaves, Holy Spirit comes. For us, Jesus left 2000 years ago, so there’s no waiting!

/ / Pentecost Sunday shows us that the Holy Spirit is for ALL of us.

I think this is another reason, and maybe the most important reason that Jesus sends the Holy Spirit AFTER he leaves. Remember I said there were 5 groups of people.

People who believed while Jesus was alive.

A sub group of those people who then saw Jesus resurrected.

Then people who had seen him but didn’t believe while he was alive, and chose to after he was resurrected.

People who heard about Jesus but never saw him alive, or resurrected, but believe because someone told them, whether that person saw Jesus or not.

And people who don’t believe any of those times.

People believe because of different circumstances. And for some, they saw Jesus alive, saw the miracles, heard his words, recognized the spirit on his life. But for some, they didn’t have any of that. So different moments of belief, and different reasons. Ask someone who saw resurrected Jesus if they have a hard time believing? That’s gonna stick with you forever!

Seeing resurrected Jesus would have been an incredible moment.

John 20:19-22 says, / / That Sunday evening the disciples were meeting behind locked doors because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders. [this is after he’s been resurrected from the dead] Suddenly, Jesus was standing there among them! “Peace be with you,” he said. As he spoke, he showed them the wounds in his hands and his side. They were filled with joy when they saw the Lord! Again he said, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.” Then he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit...”

WAIT WAIT WAIT..... didn’t they need to wait until Pentecost Sunday to receive the Holy Spirit?

This changes the story, doesn’t it?

The people in that room, got to experience something no one else in this world will ever experience. They received the Holy Spirit as a direct gift from the resurrected Jesus Christ BEFORE Pentecost Sunday.

Now, imagine if that was the end of the story. Imagine if that was all we got, and then we, as believers, as followers of Jesus had to believe that we have received the Holy Spirit, but the only time we read about it was that JESUS HIMSELF breathed on his disciples and that’s when they received. It would be pretty hard to believe, wouldn’t it?

You’d have a whole group of Christians believing that they don’t receive the Spirit because Jesus isn’t here to breath on them. Tell me that’s not true. We all know it is.

We tend to believe first in what we’ve seen, and what we have experienced, right? Thomas, one of the twelve disciples, wasn’t there in that encounter in John 20:19-22, and because of that he had a hard time believing at first. Even though the other disciples who had seen resurrected Jesus told him, “He’s alive, just like he said and we have seen him!” - Thomas says in John 20:25, / / “I won’t believe it unless I see the nail wounds in his hands, put my fingers into them, and place my hand into the wound in his side.” Eight days later the disciples were together again, and this time Thomas was with them. The doors were locked; but suddenly, as before, Jesus was standing among them.

LISTEN to how Thomas reacts when the difficulty of believing shifts for him... John 20:27, / / …he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and look at my hands. Put your hand into the wound in my side. Don’t be faithless any longer. Believe!” “My Lord and my God!” Thomas exclaimed.

/ / Seeing IS believing, because it removes the doubts. But FAITH is believing without seeing, even in the face of doubt.

And Jesus says in vs 29, / / “You believe because you have seen me. Blessed are those who believe without seeing me.”

So, turn to the person next to you and say, “Congratulations… You are blessed because you believe without ever having seen the resurrected Christ.”

/ / Pentecost Sunday is a gift to the believers who weren’t there in that moment when Jesus breathed on the disciples. First of all, Thomas wasn’t there, so we can assume there were others that weren’t there as well. We know Jesus revealed himself to at least 500 of his disciples during that 40 days on the earth after his resurrection.

Jesus has given the Holy Spirit to some, but there’s no other place it says Jesus gave the Holy Spirit to his disciples during those 40 days, but in Luke 24:49, just before he ascends into heaven, another transition point, we have alive Jesus, we have resurrected Jesus, and we are about to move into glorified Jesus, King of Kings, sitting at the right hand of the Father in heaven… he says, / / “And now I will send the Holy Spirit, just as my Father promised. But stay here in the city until the Holy Spirit comes and fills you with power from heaven.”

This is how Pentecost Sunday shows us that the Holy Spirit is a gift for all of us. It removes alive Jesus and resurrected Jesus from the equation. Now the people who received from Jesus directly are the same as those who have never met Jesus. The playing field is leveled. We’re all the same. Whether becoming a believer 1 day after Jesus ascends into heaven, or 2000 years after, the reality is the same. Jesus is no longer on the earth in alive or resurrected form giving the Holy Spirit to anyone. He’s not breathing on people. So we are all reliant on receiving the Holy Spirit when we believe. And by Faith we know it to be true.

Pentecost Sunday is a loud, vibrant, very showy representation of this truth. Thankfully for those disciples they didn’t have to wait too long. As we read last week, Pentecost is 50 days after Passover. Acts 1:3 says that he was on earth for 40 days ministering to them after he had resurrected. So when he says, Stay in the city until the Holy Spirit comes, thankfully they only had to wait about a week. Crucified, raised to life 3 days later, 40 days of ministry, then he ascends into heaven, and about 7 days later we are at 50 days from Passover.

Let’s read it. Acts 2:1-4, / / On the day of Pentecost all the believers were meeting together in one place. Suddenly, there was a sound from heaven like the roaring of a mighty windstorm, and it filled the house where they were sitting. Then, what looked like flames or tongues of fire appeared and settled on each of them. And everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other languages, as the Holy Spirit gave them this ability.

This is where it gets interesting. This was not an isolated event where a group of people are trying to convince everyone else something amazing happened. People heard it and came running!

vs 5 / / At the time there were devout Jews from every nation living in Jerusalem. [Pentecost was a major Jewish festival that people traveled to Jerusalem for] When they heard the loud noise, everyone came running, and they were bewildered to hear their own languages being spoken by the believers.

They were completely amazed. “How can this be?” they explained. “These people are all from Galilee, and yet we hear them speaking in our own native languages! Here we are … and we all hear these people speaking in OUR OWN languages about the wonderful things God has done!” They stood there amazed and perplexed.

Jesus said, Wait for Power....That POWER was just REVEALED!

A loud, vibrant expression that anyone can receive the Holy Spirit. And Peter goes on to explain to these Jewish people, who most would know who Jesus was, and that he had been killed, some may have even been in the crowed shouting, “Crucify him”… Remember, Jesus was crucified over Passover, which is another Jewish holy day that people would travel to be a part of.

So, Peter explains that what is happening is the fulfillment of what the Old Testament prophets had said would happen, the Spirit of God would descend on all people, and it is made possible because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

in vs 37 it says, / / Peter’s words pierced their hearts, and they said to him and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?”

Peter replied, “Each of you must repent of your sins and turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. This promise is to you, to your children, and to those far away - all who have been called by the Lord our God.”

Those who believed what Peter said were baptized and added to the church that day - about 3,000 in all.

This group of people, part of the group that did not believe in Jesus while he was alive, or after he was resurrected. Never got the chance to be in front of resurrected Jesus to have him breath on them to receive the Holy Spirit, got the same opportunity. And Peter was SO CONFIDENT of this fact because there he is, overflowed with a whole group of people, talking in other languages that they don’t know, proclaiming the greatness of God, having just received the Holy Spirit themselves.

It happened TO them, so they were confident it would happen FOR others. And when he says, This is a promise to you, to your children and to those far off, is confidence that for all time anyone who follows this, repent of their sins and believe in the name of Jesus Christ, you WILL receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Removing any doubt that you need some sort of special circumstance to receive the Holy Spirit. Jesus is gone, he’s in heaven, but the promise he gave, “it is better for me to go away, if I go away I will send the Holy Spirit” was absolutely 100% true.

/ / Can we be filled more than once?

I want to end this morning by looking at the difference of / / Receiving the Holy Spirit, and being Filled with the Holy Spirit. The other thing Pentecost Sunday shows us is that there were people in that room that had already received the Holy Spirit from their experience in John 20 when Jesus breathed on them and said Receive the Holy Spirit. And yet, again, they are filled with his presence.

This is something we call indwelling. / / Indwelling is what happens when you believe. When you confess Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, and you are marked, sealed with him. 1 Corinthians 6:19 says, / / Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God?

The Spirit of God takes up permanent residence in you when you believe in Jesus. Jesus said, “He will never leave.” And it is for ALL believers. No one excluded. There are not some with the Holy Spirit and some waiting for the Holy Spirit. There are those who believe, and have received, and there are those who do not yet believe. Believers, followers of Jesus, who truly believe in him are not commanded to go get filled with the Spirit, they already are. We have been born again, and the Holy Spirit in us does not indicate direction, but rather position. A believer exhibiting signs of the Holy Spirit is not an indication of them having done something right, or receiving something you don’t have. The Holy Spirit indicates our position. We are sealed, marked for God, HIS inheritance!

The Holy Spirit is in you, yes, but let’s make something clear 1 Corinthians 6:19 says you are the temple, not the vehicle. So, we can sing “Jesus take the wheel” all day long because we don’t want to adult, because adulting is hard, but the reality is, we’re the temple, he’s in us, not driving us. we are meant to sit with him and learn from him, be changed by him, so that the decisions we make are good ones, not waiting around for someone else to make our decisions for us. / / The gift of the Spirit is SELF-Control… not TOTAL-Control.

But being FILLED with the Spirit is something we can do over and over and over again.

Galatians 5:16 says, / / So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves.

Guiding is asking to direct, isn’t it? It’s saying, “Holy Spirit, show me where to go.” It doesn’t say, wait for the Holy Spirit to control your lives, but rather, guide, be involved in the process of decision, recognizing he’s smarter than you!

Being Filled with the Spirit is an invitation to receive MORE of his direction, more of his power, more of his presence. Next week we are going to start a series on the Gifts of the Holy Spirit. Talking about what we can expect to see happen in our lives BECAUSE of the presence of the Holy Spirit.

But the point I want to make today is this. You received the Holy Spirit when you believed. But that doesn’t mean the Holy Spirit doesn’t want to come and fill you with His presence. He absolutely does. Paul says in Ephesians 5:18, / / Don’t be drunk with win, because that will ruin your life. Instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit.

CALL KELLEY UP

In Acts 4 Peter and John had been thrown into prison for preaching the gospel of Jesus, and when they are released they go tell the other believers what happened, and so they pray because they are a bit shaken. Things are heating up. so they prayed / / ...give us, your servants, great boldness in preaching your word…after this prayer, the meeting place shook, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit.

These are believers who have already received, been marked with the seal of the Holy Spirit as the guarantee. Were there on the day of Pentecost, and even some, Peter and John were there on John 20, when Jesus breathed on them to receive the Holy Spirit.

You have received. But God wants to continually pour out on you in a special way, the presence and power of His Holy Spirit.

I look at it like this. I can be in the living room with Kelley, sitting on opposite sides of the room. We’re in the same house. She’s there. I am in her presence, BUT, we can choose to engage with each other. I go sit beside her and a connection is made.

/ / Yes, you have received the Holy Spirit. You are the temple. He dwells in you. He will NEVER leave you, But when you INVITE him to move in your life. When you Invite his presence to overtake you, to fill you, his power to work in your life. … That changes everything!

And THAT is Pentecost Sunday…Not JUST that the Holy Spirit is promised as the mark and guarantee of our salvation and future inheritance, but that he is the very power of God to work miracles in your life TODAY, and that he wants to engage with you on a daily basis.