Dalton First United Methodist Church Podcast

Pentecost - Pastor Robin Lindsey

• Dalton First Methodist

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Pentecost - May 28th, 2023

Discover how the Spirit led Peter to proclaim that all who call upon the Lord's name shall be saved, and embrace the message of grace for all. Learn the importance of tearing down walls, speaking the language of love, and how to avoid building walls of division and exclusion in our own lives. Don't miss this inspiring and insightful discussion that will surely captivate your heart and mind!

Learn More at http://daltonfumc.com

Speaker 1:

You are listening to the Dalton First United Methodist Church podcast. To learn more about Dalton First United Methodist Church, visit us online at DaltonFUMCcom. We hope that today's message from Pastor Stephen Usry inspires and encourages you. It's Pentecost. You know, when I was a child, we didn't really do a lot about Pentecost. We didn't talk much about the spirit. I think it scared us. Well, first off, we didn't call it spirit. Back then We called it what Ghost? So you know, when I thought of the Holy Ghost, i either thought of Casper or something that terrified me And the Holy Spirit's kind of somewhere in between those two things. As you just heard, it kind of terrified some people, but was something that brought something incredibly friendly and good to us.

Speaker 1:

A couple things I want you to know about Pentecost. First off, when you read the Bible, especially the New Testament, it's true, the Old Testament even more so, but we're focusing on New Testament now. We forget that it's a library, not a book. There are 27 different separate units in it, all written over the course of a hundred to a hundred and fifty years, and only Luke who wrote Acts. By the way, he wrote Luke and Acts Too, volume set. They're not together in the Bible, but they're written that way. Only Luke refers to Pentecost. No, no other person makes any reference anywhere. Peter doesn't in 1st Peter and 2nd Peter. Paul doesn't in all of his writings, cause Paul wouldn't have been there. But Peter was there. Certainly we heard him preach, but no one else refers to it except Luke. So let's get your flavor of how we got there.

Speaker 1:

Let's go back, if we can in time, for just a moment or two. Let me get this one kind of tell what time it is. Oh, i got hours. I want you to go back first to the crucifixion And in that moment when, when the world of the early Christians who were followers of Jesus was shattered upon the cross because all of a sudden Their leader is gone, and while they have some vague promises that will make sense in hindsight, they didn't make sense in foresight and they had no idea what was going to happen. Then, a little while later, there's the resurrection, totally unexpected, totally uncalled for, even though now, again, in hindsight, they see his predictions, but they didn't understand them back then. So now, all of a sudden, there's the resurrection, but even with the resurrection there's an ascension. Jesus did not physically stay on the earth First off, the entire time he seemed to come and go in some way. And then he said I'm making a final go here from the back of the Mount of Olives where the ascension was. We don't talk much about the ascension either. He says I'm gone and I'm not physically coming back till it's the end, but we'll talk more about that later. And so now this is where we leave with the disciples. Oh, that's it.

Speaker 1:

What else do you do? Jesus had been instructing them and the most important thing he told them was wait. Do you like to wait? Do you enjoy not knowing when it's going to happen? Whatever, it is good or bad, either waiting for the hammer to drop or waiting for something exciting. I mean, people tell you that My memory as a child, my mother used to say oh, robin, waiting for Santa Claus is the most exciting part. And I thought no, it's not, getting up Christmas morning is the most exciting part. But I guess mom got mixed up And then it came.

Speaker 1:

They weren't ready, they weren't prepared, they were just together. Now, why were they together? They were together, first thoughts, because they were scared and kind of gathered together Our son, that's got our grandchildren, and his wife they've got ducks. Now They've got ducks, chickens and quails. Why they have them, god only knows, and he's not talking. Ducks are the dumbest things on the planet. They're called runner ducks. They don't fly, but you throw them out in the open, they throw them out in their yard. They don't have to worry about them going. They're always two inches apart from each other. They never separate, and if you want them to go with you, all you have to do is pick one up and the others will follow you wherever you go. If you jump off a cliff, they'll jump off a cliff, and so that's when you're scared. You get that, and I can see that the ducks are a little square. They quack a lot, and so that's the way the disciples and the followers of Jesus, including Jesus family, were. They were gathered together, but they were gathered together for more than that. They were also gathered together for worship. It was Pentecost.

Speaker 1:

Now, quickly, let me tell you there are three major festivals in the Jewish faith. You probably know this, but I'll remind you anyway, because I did the research and I might as well share it with you. First one is, of course, passover, and that's the time that Christ died was right after Passover, and then you come forward 50 days. Well, you're looking at that with five, zero. No, that's zero. Five, five, zero. Fifty days. You come forward and you get Pentecost.

Speaker 1:

Now, pentecost is a Greek word that means fifty, but what you need to know is that in the Bible you will see that called except in Acts two not Pentecost. But in the Old Testament you'll see it called the Festival of Weeks W-E-E-K-S. In other words, seven weeks and one day, sometimes seven, forty, nine, one more days, fifty seven weeks and one day after Passover, jews are to gather together in Jerusalem and celebrate the first harvest, the early harvest of the barley. They have two growing seasons in Israel, an early one and a late one, because the last festival is called the Festival of the Tabernacles or the Festival of the Tents, and it occurs in the fall and it is somewhat similar to our Thanksgiving. It's when you celebrate the full harvest of the full thing of the summer growing season. But we're back at Pentecost.

Speaker 1:

Pentecost. What that meant was if you were a male Jew within twenty miles of Jerusalem, you were required by law to be at Pentecost at the temple. If you were further than that, in the diaspora the spreading out of the Jews after the persecutions then you just came to any of those festivals you could get to, and so at each one of those festivals you would have a large international gathering occur, and that's the group that Linda so eloquently read to us. Now, these were Greek speaking Jews, because they were out in the Roman Empire, on the eastern side, all those places she named, in the eastern part of the Roman Empire. The western part of the Roman Empire spoke Latin, but the eastern part of the Roman Empire the official language was Greek, and so they have come together. At that moment.

Speaker 1:

We will never know exactly what happened. I mean, obviously somebody told Luke probably Peter himself what happened at Pentecost, and Luke has written it down, but we have struggled with understanding exactly what that thing was that occurred. We know people spoke to each other from other countries who spoke other languages, and they understood each other clearly. We know that this is not what they call speaking in tongues. That's glossolalia. That's another story, another sermon for another day. Get out of first Corinthians or something. 14, i think, is where it is. This is just people understanding each other's language, and we know there's a powerful movement.

Speaker 1:

We know that it was so strange that people on the outside, and even those on the some of those on the inside thought well, they're just drunk, they've understood this festival wrong. This is not a drinking festival, but somehow they've been. Drinking Didn't work that way, peter said. He stood up and said they're not drunk. He said I want you to know that this is a fulfillment of the book of Joel. Now, book of Joel is one of those that, except the Pentecost, we almost never hear anything about. It's got all this stuff about locusts eating up all the plants and things like that. It's only four chapters long if you want to read it, but it's a little weird. I don't mind telling you. This comes out of the second chapter and it talks about the whole book of Joel talks about the day of the Lord And that's critically important that you understand what the day of the Lord is or you won't understand either the prophet Joel or Peter Sermon.

Speaker 1:

The day of the Lord in Jewish theology was when God would come back and do a final judgment on the earth. So everything up until the present moment was always called the present age, even though it may have happened thousands of years ago. Still called the present age because the day of the Lord had not occurred Somewhere in the future. That would be what was vaguely called the new age or the age to come, and the transition point was the day of the Lord, when God would come down. Now we have drawn that into our theology. What is it? What's the day of the Lord in Christian theology? Somebody got it. Second coming, second coming in Jesus. That's our day of the Lord.

Speaker 1:

The day of the Lord in the Jewish theology was full of terror. You heard her read blood, moon, blood and sun turned to darkness and all that stuff. But in our Christian theology we said yes, for some people it may feel like that, but for us it's the coming of Christ. And now it's tied up with the coming of the Holy Spirit for us. All of a sudden, that which is eternal drives a wedge down into our temporal lives. All of a sudden, that which is infinite drives a wedge down into our finite lives. All of a sudden, the day of the Lord is upon us and that God is now present through the Holy Spirit. And now we begin to sense something and it changes lives.

Speaker 1:

I referred to it in my Easter sermon, right here in this pulpit, that Peter went from being a coward who denied and betrayed the Lord to a man who was courageous and spoke boldly, even to the point of asking to be crucified upside down. That's the Peters right here, as you see, the beginning of the new Peter, the new man who was boldly speaking for Christ. But it's what Joel says, that we must hear And why Peter quoted Joel and how significant it is for the church today. The first thing Joel said is I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh. You see the word all, all There, it is all flesh. I'm not pouring it out on a certain group of people, i'm not pouring it out on a very limited group of people who are now more important and special than other people. I'm pouring it out on the whole flesh. There are no limitations to it there. We need to hear that today. And then he concludes.

Speaker 1:

Joel does the passage that Peter quoted with when that moment comes, everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Not some, not the people I like or agree with, not the people who look like me or think like me or act like me. He says every single person who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. And that was said some five or 600 years before Jesus came and offered it to us The salvation of faith in Christ It was promised. Peter then refers to it. If you read Acts closely it's 28 chapters long. It's kind of long and it kind of bounces around in the. You kind of get lost. But the first 15 chapters are this battle within the church, this confrontation within the church, this confrontation of who's gonna win. Because that was the Jerusalem church, not all of them.

Speaker 1:

Peter came out of that Jerusalem church, but in that Jerusalem church there were a group of people who said well, no, wait just a minute. If you want to be a Christian, you have to fit within this narrow category. In fact it was so narrow that at the beginning it was just Jews, nobody else. There's no point for mission work. Why would you go tell a group of people that are born to be condemned about Jesus? They can't possibly know him. Jesus came as the Messiah of the Jews and nobody else. And so there was that faction that fault and struggled and confronted and demanded and interrupted meetings and all kinds of controversy about it. Finally they backed off just a little bit and then they came forward again with a proposal. Okay, well, everybody who follows the law, even if they're proselytes. Proselyte was a Gentile who converted to Judaism. You were never really truly a Jew, you were a proselyte, which meant now that you were, but you were following the law. And so by following the law they said okay, then we'll sneak you in. If you follow the law completely, absolutely utterly, then I guess you can come in too.

Speaker 1:

But if you're reading those first 15 chapters and you read Peter and Cornelius, read that, find that chapter. It's chapter 10 or something like that sometime And then you hear about Paul and Paul going out from Antioch, out into the mission field, you'll see, led by the Holy Spirit, these two men continued to push those boundaries back, to push them back As others tried to set limitations on the grace of our Lord and Savior, jesus Christ. Peter and Paul said no. And it came to a head in the 15th chapter and Paul basically said and Peter basically said you can set what rules you want. God sets no rules. God sets no limitations.

Speaker 1:

And I want you to understand that this is not something we've made up, because people say oh, you just made that up. You've changed things. This is not what it's supposed to be. You've changed Scripture. And Peter says it's in joy. I will pour out my spirit on all flesh, and everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. I didn't write that. Peter said. It was written hundreds of years before I was born. And there it is in your word, your Scripture. So don't talk to me about limitations and limiting God's grace. It shall not be done. It cannot be done.

Speaker 1:

Paul writes in Ephesians 2.14, for he is our peace in his flesh. He has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall That is the hostility between us. He was talking about the battle between the Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians. He says through the Holy Spirit, i want you to know that wall has been broken down. But what are we doing today? We're doing it both politically and the secular world. We're doing it in the church. We're building brick walls as fast as we can make the mortar. We're building walls and building walls and building walls and building walls and saying I'm within this wall, you're on the outside of this wall, stay away.

Speaker 1:

I can hear Peter and Paul. I can hear Peter at Pentecost. He says oh no, you misunderstand. Did you not hear what the Spirit led me to say on Pentecost? I will pour out my spirit, all flesh and everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Let us do no more wall building my brothers and sisters in Christ. Let us tear them down in the Holy Spirit And may we speak a universal language of love. I did watch Pastor Stephen's first sermon so I know what he said The language of love.