June 8, 2025 SERMON

Acts 2:1-8  

For the past few weeks, we’ve been looking at the topic of Supernatural Transformation. There is no greater example of that than today’s scripture, the birth of the Church and the excitement that followed. O how I pray for that excitement in todays Church. Lord do it again in this place, amen.

John Wimber was a product of the Jesus movement in the 60’s. He met Christ in a dramatic way, and began reading the New Testament, beginning with the Gospels and then on to the book of Acts. He was excited about what he was reading, but when he went to a church, he was disillusioned. 

The polite and tidy service was over exactly on time. Wimber looked at some of the people around him and said: “When are you gonna do the stuff?” “What stuff?” they wanted to know. He said, “You know. . . the stuff!” He had been reading about the conversions, healings, deliverance and other miracles that took place in the early church recorded the book of Acts. 

But instead of signs and wonders, he saw no sign of anything that would make him wonder, except the deadness of the ritual he had just sat through.

As I have been studying the book of Acts. I am seeing again that signs and wonders were not the exceptions, they were the norm of the early church. 

Healings and supernatural happenings were expected and occurred regularly. 

Now some explain this by saying we are living in a different dispensation and that the age of miracles is over. They say that was for a specific time and 

place to authenticate the message of the apostles, but we no longer need that today. Realllly!! 

Does God really divide history up into neat little segments where He acts one way with one generation and a totally different way with another? If so, then God is not, “the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).

If He does respond differently at different times, then He is one kind of God at one point in history and an entirely different God at another. 

The church today needs to discover once again that we have an unchanging God and an unchanging kingdom. We need once again to discover the power of Pentecost. We need to become a Pentecostal church — and I am not talking about a denomination — I am talking about an Acts 2 church. 

When they went from, believing in forgiveness to showing forgiveness. When they went from thinking about what Jesus had said, to proclaiming what He said - in word -and in deed.

There must be that mysterious moment in all of our lives - a moment when belief comes alive - A moment when our thinking about the promises that God has made becomes in us a transforming faith. 

A moment when ideas suddenly move our minds and our hearts, move our feet and our hands, our mouths and our lips in a new and a life-giving way. 

A moment when the fruit of the Holy Spirit, brings us closer to God - and closer to one another.

The late Dr. A. W. Tozer, author and pastor, said, "If the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from the church today, 95 percent of what we do would go on and no one would know the difference. If the Holy Spirit had been withdrawn from the New Testament church, 95 percent of what they did would stop, and everybody would know the difference."

We need to be filled with the Spirit. We need to be operating in the gifts of the Spirit. We need to see people’s lives turn around. We need to see people healed physically, emotionally, socially and spiritually. We need to experience the unity of the Spirit as the early church did. We need to have the fire fall and the people of God to rise up. 

Rick Kirchoff says, “When God sends forth His Spirit amazing things happen; barriers are broken, communities are formed, opposites are reconciled, unity is established, disease is cured, addiction is broken, cities are renewed, races are reconciled, hope is established, people are blessed, and church happens. 

Today the Spirit of God is present and we’re gonna’ have church. So be ready, maybe God is up to something. . . discouraged folks cheer up, dishonest folks ‘fess up, sour folks sweeten up, closed folk, open up, gossipers shut up, conflicted 

folks make up, sleeping folks wake up, lukewarm folk, fire up, dry bones shake up, and pew potatoes stand up! But most of all, today Christ the Savior of all the world is lifted up.” 

If that is going to happen in our church certain conditions need to be met and certain perceptions need to be changed. We need a major standard shift. First, Pentecostal power comes when we realize the Christian life is not about keeping rules, but about knowing Christ. 

In our church, the service is somewhat predictable. Don’t get me wrong, the choir sings, the Bible is read, the preacher preaches all the right things. But where is the passion? Excitement is not exactly how you would describe our service. 

Rarely does anyone raise their hands or clap during the music. And hardly ever does anyone say AMEN, glory or hallelujah to encourage the Pastor while he preaches.

It seems like we think Christianity is about keeping the rules and being a good person. If we love God, we do it quietly and never speak of it. 

But until we renew our commitment that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life, and that no one comes to the Father except through Him, we will not experience the presence of the Holy Spirit or know the zeal of the early church. 

Until the people who call themselves the people of God renew their commitment to knowing Christ on a daily basis and living faithfully for Him, we will not experience the power of Pentecost. 

Until we live by repentance and faith, we will always be going through the motions of religion without knowing the person of Jesus Christ. 

As long as we think that Christianity is something that WE do, we are missing the point. It is not about what we do, but what God does in us. Being a Christian is not doing the right thing or believing the right doctrines, it is knowing the right person.

It is not about being a member of the church or reciting creeds. It’s not about baptism or communion, although those are important parts of our life together. It’s about surrendering our life, our body, our mind and our hearts to Jesus Christ and asking Him to take up residence in me. 

It’s about confessing my sin and turning from it. It’s about banking everything I have and am on God and loving Him with my whole heart. 

The Christian faith is not a feeling. It is a reality. It is a real relationship with a real person — Jesus Christ. Christianity is about the most powerful and wonderful person in the universe who desires to know us intimately. 

This experience is not tame; it is wild and powerful. Paul said, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection” (Philippians 3:10).

The second point I would like to make is that Pentecostal power comes when we realize the Christian life is not just about salvation, but transformation. There are many churches that faithfully preach about salvation and the necessity of new birth. 

But if our faith only consists of a single event where we repented of our sin and came to Christ, then it is an incomplete faith. What if a baby was born and we all celebrated the new life, but the baby never took in nourishment, was never nurtured, never grew, never developed. As wonderful as its birth was, it would not survive.

If we think that the Christian life is only about being born again, think again. It is not just about salvation; it is about transformation. To hear some people talk you would think that once we come to Christ we just wait around to go to heaven. We are just putting in time until Jesus comes. 

If that is the way we think, we will never experience Pentecostal power. We will never understand that Jesus Christ has come to establish His kingdom “on earth, as it is in heaven,” and we are His agents through whom He works to make that happen. 

We are to grow in holiness, and be salt and light in a tasteless and dark world. We are to become transformed on a daily basis, through spiritual disciplines, and then become agents of transformation in the world.

It is sort of like this. You can take ten gallons of gasoline and release a tremendous amount of power and energy by just dropping a lighted match into it. It makes a dramatic onetime impact. But there is another way to release the energy in that gasoline. Place it in the fuel tank of a new car, designed to get 30 miles to the gallon. The high tech engine will use that ten gallons of gasoline to take a person 300 miles or more.

Explosions may be spectacular, but the sustained, controlled burn has staying power. We don’t want to be a flash in the pan; we want to make a difference in this world over time. We want to last for the long haul. We don’t want the Holy Spirit to just save us for heaven; we want Him to use His power to transform our life. 

We want Him to use us in this world for kingdom purposes. The kingdom is not far away in time and space; it is here and now. And to be a member of this kingdom, we need the power of the Holy Spirit operating in our life every day. 

The apostle John, in the book of Revelation, talks about all the things we have to go through in this world and says, “This calls for patient endurance on the part of the saints who obey God’s commandments and remain faithful to Jesus” (Revelation 14:12).

The third point I would like to make is that Pentecostal power comes when: we overcome apathy with zeal. We can’t try to be good and think we’re a Christian. We cannot just point to a past experience of being “born again” and say that we are a Christian. We have to grow. We have to want to be transformed into the image of Christ and want to be made like him. 

We can’t be apathetic toward the things of God and His kingdom and experience Pentecostal power. A true transformation results in a transformation of the heart that loves God and desires to know Him better every day. 

When we are delivered from the bondage of sin and ushered into the kingdom of Godwhere there is freedom, we delight in the things of God. We no longer do things because we have to or feel obligated to, we do all things because we love kingdom living.

The more we know God, the more we will love Him, and the more excited we will be about His kingdom. The more we love Him, the more we will want others to know Him. The more we experience His presence and power, the more of it we want.

This is the way to live. We have been forgiven. We have inherited eternal life. We have experienced eternal love. We are holding nothing back because we have discovered life. We have found the pearl of great price, and it is worth more than everything else we have seen or possessed. 

Because of this we are excited about life, and we are excited about the wonderful God we serve. We are willing to do whatever it takes to have more of Him.

Columnist Jonathan Rauch believes that Americahas made “a major civilizational advance” in recent years. Rauch, a longtime atheist, is thrilled about a phenomenon he calls ‘apatheism’ [apathetic theism]. 

It’s not that people don’t believe in God anymore, Rauch writes — the majority will still say they believe. . . . On the whole, the people Rauch describes haven’t been putting much thought or effort into their faith. They’re looking for comfort and reassurance, not for a God who asks anything of them. 

Writer David Brooks who noticed a trend a few years ago and coined the term flexidoxy [flexible beliefs]. Flexidoxy describes the form of religion practiced by many. 

Basically, it means that people have become flexible in their belief system and look at religion as a giant smorgasbord from which they can pick and choose the beliefs that most suit them. They become the center of their own faith and adapt it to what they see as important. 

Many of you heard or read about 27-year-old Aaron Ralston who had his right arm pinned by an 800-pound boulder in a climbing accident. He had gone hiking in Bluejohn Canyon, adjacent to Utah’s Canyonlands National Park. He was an experienced climber; he had already climbed 49 other peaks in Colorado which were over 14,000 feet. He thought about what it would be like to die on the mountain and have his family find his body, or perhaps never know his fate.

Ralston thought about his options. After five days of being pinned, and having run out of food and water, he decided to apply a tourniquet and amputate his arm below the elbow with his pocketknife. He then rigged anchors and rappelled to the canyon floor with his one good arm. 

He walked downstream until he was spotted by a Utah Public Safety Helicopter. What the news did not say was that this Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Carnegie Mellon University credits his faith in God for his ability to do what he had to do. 

He is a deeply committed Christian who often plays the piano in Church in Greenwood Village near Denver, Colorado. 

Because Aaron wanted to live, he was willing to cut away everything that was holding him back. It is that kind of commitment and zeal that will enable us to experience Pentecostal power. 

When we are willing to cut away everything that is holding us back and walk out of the canyon of bondage, then the Holy Spirit will come in new ways, and we’ll know a life that we did not know was possible. 

The Bible says, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily hinders our progress. And let us run with endurance the race that God has set before us” (Hebrews 12:1, New Living). 

The apostle Paul did this, he wrote, “Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13-14).

John Wesley said, “Give me 100 folks who fear nothing but sin, and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw whether they be clergymen or laymen; such alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of heaven on earth.” 

It has been said that the early church won 3 million souls in the first 30 years after Pentecost. What will they write about us? 

In Jesus’ Name,  Amen!