Pentacost Sunday
On Pentecost Sunday, We Received The Incredible Gift Of The Indwelling Of The Holy Spirit
Dan Franklin
May 28, 2023 35m
On Pentecost Sunday, we received an incredible gift, and the gift that we celebrate at Pentecost is that God's Spirit indwells all who believe. Join us as we learn more about the Holy Spirit and the incredible impact having Him affects our lives. Video recorded at Upland, California.
Tags
pentecost sunday holy spirit the father the son the trinity the power of the holy spirit read the bible pray fruit of the spiritTranscriptionmessageRegarding Grammar:
This is a transcription of the sermon. People speak differently than they write, and there are common colloquialisms in this transcript that sound good when spoken, and look like bad grammar when written.
This is a transcription of the sermon. People speak differently than they write, and there are common colloquialisms in this transcript that sound good when spoken, and look like bad grammar when written.
Intro: [00:00:00] Hey there. Thanks so much for checking out one of our messages here at Life Bible Fellowship Church. And we know there are two great ways you can connect with us. You can visit our website at LBF.church to learn more about all of our ministries and what we believe. And also, you can subscribe to us on YouTube to make sure that you don't miss one of our future videos.
Jeremiah Shabazz: [00:00:19] Good morning, my name is Jeremiah Shabazz, and I have the fun job of working with the two-year-olds in Life Kid Ministries. I'm thankful to be a student at Exit83 Ministries as well. Today I'll be reading from Acts chapter 2, verses 1 through 4, "When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them." This is God's Word.
Dan Franklin: [00:00:56] Amen. You can grab a seat. Good morning. Thanks, Jeremiah, for that. So, obviously, and Jeff just mentioned it a few moments ago, but tomorrow is a holiday which we all know, today is also a holiday, some of us may know about it, and some of us may not. For those of you who know what holiday is today, all right, Pentecost, good guess. In case you were like, I didn't know, but I'm guessing by the scripture that was read today is the holiday of Pentecost. Which if you're sort of like me, and you grew up in not a very liturgical church, that's not something that you may be familiar with, but it is something that Christians all over the globe celebrate on this Sunday. And Pentecost is an Old Testament festival that the Jewish people would celebrate, and it took place 50 days after the last Sunday in the Passover festival, so that's actually the name Pentecost means 50th day. And it was something meant to celebrate the harvest and to celebrate God's provision for his people. But for us as believers in Jesus, we celebrate something even more significant on Pentecost because it was on the holiday of Pentecost that the story, we just heard read took place, that God gave the Holy Spirit to his church. And so this morning, we're taking a break from our series through the Gospel of Matthew, and we are just going to take time to celebrate Pentecost by doing a couple of things.
Dan Franklin: [00:02:25] Today we'll be very focused on the Holy Spirit, and so the two things that we're hoping to do is, number one, to be able to take in and celebrate the gift that God has given us in the Holy Spirit. And number two, then to ask the question, what does it look like for us to, in a daily way, live receiving that gift of the Holy Spirit? So the service will unfold a little bit differently than how we normally do it, I'm going to be up here talking through the passage that Jeremiah just read for about 15 minutes, and we'll talk about Acts 2 verses 1 through 4, and what it means that God has given us his Spirit. Then we'll have an opportunity to respond with some singing as we celebrate what God has done in giving us the Spirit. And then I'll be back up again to talk for about another 15 minutes from Galatians 5, about what it means to walk by the Spirit. And then after that, we'll get to respond again with songs and with taking communion together. So that's how things are going to unfold.
Dan Franklin: [00:03:26] But just as we get started, we're going to be very focused on talking about the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is probably the most mysterious member of the Trinity for any of us who are believers. Which, by the way, just talking about the Trinity, that's enough to make your mind meld. Am I right? I mean, we're like, all right, we believe in one God, one God spoke everything into creation, there aren't many gods and he's the king God. There is one God, but that one God exists not as an individual in isolation, but as a community of persons. And he's not a split personality, and it's not three gods, it's one God, three persons. And as we're thinking about the Father, I think we can kind of get our minds around it. All right, the Father, he is the one that initiates creation, he is the one that sets the plan of redemption in order, he sort of is the initiator. We can get our minds around the Son because we get to read in the gospels, like the Gospel of Matthew, and we see Jesus, the Word made Flesh, we get our minds around the Son. But I think the temptation when we start to talk about the Holy Spirit is to start to talk about the Spirit as an it. Like we got the father who's a he, we've got the Son who's a he, and we've got the Spirit, and we're sort of like it, as if the Spirit is this impersonal force that we sort of interact with, and that's not at all how the Spirit is presented in the New Testament.
Dan Franklin: [00:05:00] I could do this for a while but let me just give you a quick survey of some of the things said about the Spirit in the New Testament. The Spirit can be grieved, that's Ephesians chapter 5, verse 30, you can grieve the Spirit. A force is not grieved, but the Holy Spirit is personal, and he is sometimes grieved. James chapter 4, verse 5 says, the Spirit has desires. Jesus says, in John chapter 14, verse 26, that the Spirit teaches us and reminds us. And Paul says in Romans 8 that the Spirit prays for us. So the whole time that the Spirit is described, there's this description of a person that we're engaging with, not a force that we're trying to harness. We are engaging with a very person, a divine person, who is given to us, and who is given to us at Pentecost 2000 years ago.
Dan Franklin: [00:05:59] And so let's take some time now, we're just going to walk through these four verses that we get in Acts Chapter 2, about the coming of the Spirit. And we read first in verse 1, "When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place.". And the ‘they’ being talked about here is about 120 believers, as described in chapter 1, who were gathered together and waiting. So maybe they were praying together, which it seems like they often did. Maybe they were just having a sweet time of togetherness as early believers, but about 120, so not just the 12 apostles, but all sorts of other believers also. And if you're wondering why they were waiting, it's because of something that Jesus said to them back in chapter 1, verses 4 and 5 he said, “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. 5For John baptized with a water, but in a few days you will be baptized with b the Holy Spirit.” So here they are all waiting, as Jesus told them to, for this gift that they would receive.
Dan Franklin: [00:07:13] And in verse 2, we read of the event where that gift was given, "Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting." Now, when you think of one word to describe what's going on here, probably the appropriate word to describe this would be the word power. Now, let's look back at chapter 1 of Acts again. Acts chapter 1, verse eight, the words of Jesus, "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you." And if you read throughout the New Testament, there are all kinds of ways that the Spirit brings power. He brings the power for us to be bold, just as he emboldened the prophets in the Old Testament and the Apostles in the New Testament. The Spirit comes upon us in order to give us spiritual gifts so that we're able to serve one another, that's part of how its power comes upon us. And eventually, in our journey through the Gospel of Matthew, we'll get to chapter 12, and in chapter 12 we have Jesus indicating that his miracles were all done by the power of the Holy Spirit. When the Holy Spirit comes, he comes with power. He is not God's impersonal power, but He is the agent through which power comes to all of us.
Dan Franklin: [00:08:39] And we'll talk about this later on when I'm up here the second time, but one of the main ways that the Spirit brings power is he brings power for us not to be stuck in sin and in fear and in dysfunction. So I'm not going to ask for a show of hands, but if anybody in here feels stuck in some area of your life, the Holy Spirit wants to get us unstuck. And again, we'll talk more about this later.
Dan Franklin: [00:09:08] The Holy Spirit comes, and he comes with power, and just imagine he is interrupting this, whether it was a prayer service or a fellowship service of about 120 people. We'll just think about this for a second, and we'll talk about this more later on, but do you think it's possible that sometimes we might have a plan for our day and the Holy Spirit might have a different plan? That was possible here, I don't know if Peter had a whole list of what they were going to do or he was like, hey, I'm going to open up in prayer, and then Mary's going to pray, and then John's going to close us out at the end, and then after that, we'll have some food. Whatever the plan was, it wasn't this, the violent sound of a rushing wind comes and fills the house where they're sitting.
Dan Franklin: [00:09:49] And then we read this in verse 3, "They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them." Now tongues of fire, this is pretty weird, right? It's just like the fire, now, I'm not saying it wouldn't have been freaky, but they might have understood the idea of fire because fire frequently was how God manifested his presence when he wanted to do this in a physical way. So, you know, the burning bush, and other instances like that, all right fire as God's presence. In fact, if you see the graphic up there, it has to do with there's fire and then there's wind, these are the two symbols of the Spirit that we get in this passage. So the whole idea of fire, but the fire doesn't stay all just in one spot, the fire separates itself and it says into tongues of fire that rested on each one of them. And the whole tongues of fire thing, this is weird, here's what I think is going on, I think it's actually much more simple. We probably haven't each spent a lot of time ruminating on the shape of the tongue, but the shape of the tongue is a little bit like the shape of a flame that flickers over a candle. I think that's all that he's describing here. So instead of the fire just coming in and resting in one spot, the fire separates, and rests on who, on each of them, on each person in the room. Not just on Peter, not just on John, not just on Mary, on each one of them.
Dan Franklin: [00:11:20] And here's why this is so significant. The Holy Spirit, this is not the first mention of the Holy Spirit, and this is not the first time the Holy Spirit did something miraculous. If you read the Old Testament and the Holy Spirit shows up frequently, but he shows up temporarily to empower someone to do something specific. So the three most common instances are the Holy Spirit comes upon a king to empower him to rule, or to a prophet to empower them to speak, or to a warrior to empower him to win a battle. Those are the three most frequent occurrences of the Spirit in the Old Testament. And the Spirit would come upon someone to do that, and then would depart afterwards. This is why, in Psalm 51, when David writes a psalm of repentance after his adultery with Bathsheba, he says, "Create in me a clean heart." And then after that, he says, "God, don't take your Holy Spirit from me." And David's crying out about that because he saw God do that with King Saul. When Saul became king, God sent the Holy Spirit upon him, and when Saul rebelled, God took the Holy Spirit away from him.
Dan Franklin: [00:12:35] But what's happening here is different because God is giving his Spirit to indwell in us forever. And then also because the Spirit is not coming just on the prophets, just on the kings, or just on the warriors, but on each one of us. If you're in this room and you're a believer in Jesus, the Holy Spirit is dwelling in you. It doesn't matter if you're 70 years old or seven years old, you have the Holy Spirit dwelling within you. And just as we get this amazing thing in Genesis 1, in this story of God creating man in his image, and other nations in the ancient Near East would have said, well, the Kings are made in God's image, or the warriors are made in God's image. But God says all human beings are made in my image in a similar way, now, every believer gets the Holy Spirit dwelling within them.
Dan Franklin: [00:13:29] And then look at what the Holy Spirit does right away in verse 4, "All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them." So right away the Spirit comes upon them, and a miracle happens. Now, it would take a long time if I was going to walk through everything that the New Testament says about this whole idea of speaking in tongues; different sermon, different time; I don't know, different 12 sermons, different times. We're not going to delve deep into that now, there are different times in the New Testament where it's murkier about what's happening when somebody's speaking in tongues. But actually, in Acts 2, it's pretty clear what's happening. The other tongues, at least in this context, are other known languages that people really spoke. And the reason that we know that first of all, tongue just means language. But the reason why we know that's what's happening here is because as this story unfolds, all of the believers go out and they're speaking about Jesus in other tongues and Jews who had come for the Feast of Pentecost from all different parts of the world all recognize their own mother tongue. They recognize their own language. So they're saying, all right, I'm nodding my head right now, sort of translating from Hebrew, I'm hearing the gospel preached in my own language because God's supernaturally empowered the early believers to speak in languages that they had never been taught.
Dan Franklin: [00:14:56] And here's the big thing I want to make sure we all catch in this, we are celebrating that God has given us the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit dwells within us to empower us, to confirm us as God's children, to seal us for the fact that one day we will have a final resurrection and that we're part of God's family. The Holy Spirit does all of that for us. But I want you to know God has given you the Holy Spirit, not just for you, and God gave the Apostles the Holy Spirit not just for them, because as soon as they receive the Holy Spirit, the Gospel of Jesus goes out through them. You have spiritual gifts, and those spiritual gifts aren't for you, just as this miracle was not just for the apostles and the early believers. God spreads his message when he gives us his Spirit, and when his Spirit comes in power.
Dan Franklin: [00:15:50] And I just want to pause here and say, guys, what a gift. Wait until you've received the gift the Father has promised, this is the gift, the gift is God himself coming to dwell within us, calming our hearts, bringing us peace, empowering us for things that we would never be able to have victory over, that is the gift that we celebrate at Pentecost. Now, we're going to talk later to make sure we are not neglecting this gift that we've been given.
Dan Franklin: [00:16:28] But we want to pause right now, and we just want to celebrate. One of the things that Jesus said in John 14 when he was getting ready to leave is he said, I won't leave you orphans, so I'm going to send another helper like me to be with you. Jesus is not standing with us in the way that he was with the Apostles, but the Holy Spirit is with us, God is with us. What a gift we have.
Dan Franklin: [00:16:55] Now, there's a lot in this passage, we're not going to go through all of it in detail. In fact, as some of you will remember, about a year ago, we went through this whole extended passage and took like five weeks on it, so I just want us to be able to get the big picture in this passage. And one of the reasons why I wanted us to talk about this is because of how this passage begins, "So I say walk by the Spirit." We have this great gift, the Holy Spirit is within us, and yet we all know that we are not twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, all living in the fullness of what God has empowered us to be able to live in. And so we want to talk about what could we do, what are the choices that we could make in order to really live in the full reception of this gift that God has given us in the Holy Spirit? And that's what I think Paul is going for in this passage when he says, "So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh." Paul is making clear that there's a battle going on inside of us, if you're not a Christian, you probably feel this, You feel at times that you're like, I want to do what I feel like I'm supposed to do, but it's hard to do. And the fact is, for those of us who are believers, that battle doesn't end, but the nature of that battle changes because now we have the Holy Spirit.
Dan Franklin: [00:18:17] He says, walk by the Spirit, don't walk by the flesh. And the flesh is sort of a catchall just to describe that there still is a part of us, even as believers in Jesus, there still is a part of us that just craves the instant gratification of whatever I can get right now, that's what we're battling. So we have these warring ideas going on inside of us. The Holy Spirit is leading us one way, the flesh is leading us another way, Paul says later on in verse 18, If you walk by the Spirit, you won't gratify the desires of the flesh.
Dan Franklin: [00:18:50] So I know this might be overly simplistic, but just think about this for a second. If you have something in your life right now that you are like, I want freedom from, I want freedom from this lust, I want freedom from this anger, I want freedom from this sort of pettiness or jealousy or deception or laziness. like, I want victory in this. Paul doesn't say, well, the way you get victory is you just focus all of your attention on the flesh and try to defeat it. He says, focus all of your attention on walking by the Spirit, because if you're walking by the Spirit, you can't because the Spirit is leading you in a different direction. There's a battle going on inside of us. And when he says Walk by the Spirit, I think he's saying in essence, the same thing that he means in Ephesians chapter 5, when he says, "Be filled with the Spirit." You have, if you're a believer, you have the Holy Spirit, he is within you. But there are decisions that we make of how much we are going to walk and step, how much we are going to live, filled and led by the Spirit.
Dan Franklin: [00:19:57] And something that I love is, as you read, first of all, I love that he talks about walking by the Spirit because this is again, a relational idea. Every Thursday morning, Karina and I go for a walk together, and it's this great experience where we're walking side by side because we're connected in a relationship. So I love the idea of we're walking with the Spirit, we're walking by the Spirit. But here's the mistake that we could make, the mistake that we can make is we could think, I'm walking and I'm inviting the Holy Spirit to come with me. So I sort of, I have my plans, I have my agenda, I have my goals, that's where I'm walking, and I'm inviting the Holy Spirit to come join me on that walk.
Dan Franklin: [00:20:38] I want you to hear something that He says later on in this same passage in verse 25, he says, "Let us keep in step with the Spirit." This is very clarifying. Who is in charge of the walk? Yeah, it's not me, it's the Holy Spirit. I'm trying to keep up, I am trying to keep in step with him because he is going somewhere. He is the leader; I am the follower. So this walk and it is a walk. We are walking in relationship, but I'm not in charge of the walk. The Holy Spirit is the one leading, and we are the ones following. We are yielding our will to him, which means that they're going to have to be different parts during the day where we make the adjustment, where we say, this was my goal and this was my plan for the day, and this was my agenda for this, but God has a different idea and I would rather try to keep in step with the Holy Spirit than try to harness him to keep in step with me.
Dan Franklin: [00:21:44] Now, Paul says something else in between these two statements, he talks about the acts of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit. And I just want to spend a moment on this to clarify what he's doing in these sections because you could read verses 19 through 21 and say there's a list of like 11 things that I'm not supposed to do. So 11 things, try not to do them. And then we get to verses 22 and 23 with the fruit of the Spirit, and we're like, all right, there are 8 or 9 things that I should try really hard to do. So try not to do the acts of the flesh and try really hard to do the fruit of the Spirit. And what I want to make clear is that's not what Paul is doing here, Paul is saying if you're walking by the flesh, verses 19 through 21 are going to happen, and that's what will emerge. You know, sexual immorality, jealousy, fits of rage, all that stuff, that will come because that's the evidence of walking by the flesh. Verses 22 and 23 is Paul giving us a picture of saying, here's what's going to happen in your life if you are walking by the Spirit. And I think even more than us looking at those qualities and saying I should try harder to do those, Paul is telling us and maybe take it as the fruit of the Spirit, so the fruit of the Spirit, Paul is saying wouldn't that taste good? Wouldn't it taste good to live that way? Wouldn't that be great if love and joy and peace and forbearance and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control, wouldn't that be good if that was your life? That's what happens if you walk by the Spirit, that is the evidence of the Spirit.
Dan Franklin: [00:23:13] And by the way, here's why this is so significant and why this passage is one of the reasons why it's so meaningful to me. the Spirit is the worker of miracles. the Spirit is the giver of spiritual gifts. the Spirit is doing all kinds of amazing, miraculous things. But when Paul gets down to it and says, do you want to recognize what a life led by the Spirit looks like? He talks about these things, he says the real evidence that the Spirit is there is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. That is the miraculous life marked by the Spirit, that you have love in a world that is divided by enmity, that you have joy in a world of grief, that you have peace in a world of chaos, that you have forbearance. And by the way, do you know what forbearance means? It means patience, that you have forbearance in the most impatient culture that has ever existed. That you have kindness and goodness, and that's sort of generosity in a culture that's all about me and all about myself. That you have faithfulness in a culture where anybody will break a promise if a better offer comes along. That you would have gentleness in a culture where we're just trying to destroy the other side. And that you would have self-control in a culture of self-indulgence. That's the miracle of being marked by the Spirit. And Paul tells us that in verses 22 and 23 saying, wouldn't that taste good? Man, don't you want that? Don't you want that miraculous transformation? This is the fruit of the Spirit leading us, and this is what we show to other people to give them a taste of the kind of transformation that God brings. When Paul says walk by the Spirit, that's what he's inviting us to.
Dan Franklin: [00:25:11] So here's what I want to do, I want to spend a few minutes on a very important question. We can read Galatians 5, and the command is clear, the command is walk by the Spirit, but let's spend a little bit of time talking about it. I'm going to give four practical ways that we walk by the Spirit. And while these aren't directly found here in this passage, I think that these are all found throughout the New Testament as ways that we walk by the Spirit. Some of them are going to be no surprise to you, and some of them might be a little bit of a surprise.
Dan Franklin: [00:25:42] But I'll put the first two up because they are going to be no surprise at all, immerse yourself in scripture and be prayerful. Some of you, especially if you grew up and you went to Sunday school, and then you went to youth group, and now you're involved in church, you're like, yeah, all the time I feel like I'm being told to read the Bible and pray more. Like, read the Bible and pray, I've been told this all the time. That's for a good reason, that's not because your Sunday school teachers and your youth leaders, and your pastors are very uncreative, that's because these are the ways, these are at the core of the ways that believers for 2000 years have sought to draw near to God. Do you know who wrote the Bible? Yeah, even more specifically. Yeah, good guess that's what we're talking about today, the Holy Spirit inspired the writers of the Bible. So if you're like, I want to know what the Holy Spirit is saying, read the Bible, that's what the Holy Spirit has said and that's what He's saying. And He brings the word to bear on our hearts in a new and fresh way when we're reading diligently and responsibly.
Dan Franklin: [00:26:49] And I'm going to guess that some of you, some of you in here, you are regular Bible readers, you have habits that you've set in place where you're regularly seeking God in His word. If we're all honest, it's like sometimes you read and you're like, all right, that's fine. Other times you read and it's really this rich time where you're like, all right, it's different. That's okay, you're still getting God's word. Some of you, you might describe yourself as like, sporadic readers. You're like, all right, I read and then I kind of don't for a week, and then I read again and. All right, that's good, like, you're getting in there, you want to get further in there. Maybe even looking at the summer months, you might want to say, all right, what's a goal I can look for in the summer months? And what I'm going to say might seem counterintuitive, but if you're like I read the Bible maybe once a week, I'm going to advise you, don't make your goal to say I'm going to read the Bible every day. It'd be great to make your goal that you're going to read the Bible two days next week, or three days next week, just to have more of the Bible's influence in your life.
Dan Franklin: [00:27:51] And by the way, also on Tuesday, we start summer Bible study around here. If you've ever been involved in summer Bible study, you know that it's not just going to be that me or somebody else is going to get up and teach, it's going to be that you will be around the table learning how to study the Bible on your own and digging in. Read the Bible, immerse yourself in Scripture, and be prayerful.
Dan Franklin: [00:28:14] And if we are looking to draw near to God, what better way than by talking to him? And we know from Romans 8, that the Holy Spirit is with us in our prayers, that he's even fixing our prayers when we don't know what to pray for. So if you're looking at this and you're like, Dan, get a little bit more creative. Like, read the Bible and pray, for heaven's sake, read the Bible and pray. Don't think that you're smarter than the thousands and millions of believers who have come before you, read the Bible and pray.
Dan Franklin: [00:28:43] But I've got two others, the third one is to be around other believers. For some of you, Sunday mornings may be the only time during your week that you are around other believers. In the Book of First Corinthians, Paul twice talks about us being the temple of the Holy Spirit. But he's very creative, he talks about it in two different ways. In chapter 6, he talks about it in a very individual way, your individual body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, and he is dwelling in you. But in chapter 3, he talks about it in a corporate way. He says, we are the temple of the Holy Spirit, and he dwells in our midst. If you are all alone in the park, the Holy Spirit is with you. But if you're with a whole bunch of believers, the Holy Spirit is with you and with them and with him and with her and you're all together. And if you are stuck in some way in your life, you're like, I can't get out of this rut, the chances are pretty good that if you're around a whole bunch of other believers, somebody else has been in that rut that you're in, and they're going to be able to encourage your heart and give you a way out. Be around other believers, find a way to make it happen. And again, if you're like my life group has taken a break, summer Bible study, men's Bible study, there are other ways to stay involved, even if it's not a formal church event, just gathering together. Say, hey, I'm going to get these five friends together and we're just going to pray together once a week, be around other believers.
Dan Franklin: [00:30:12] And finally, the fourth one is, to listen to the little nudges. Now, Jesus said something that I think is profound and it also haunts me in some ways because he said the one who is faithful in a small thing will be faithful in a great thing. And some of us are like, I want to hear from God. Like, I want to hear from God. And I want to hear him and suddenly be like, what's the big thing? Quit your job, and move to Burundi or, you know, stop this, and become a pastor, or marry her, or break up with them. I don't know, whatever it is, you are waiting for the big thing. Some of you right now are like, no, I don't want the big thing right now, that sounds terrifying. But some of us are like, I want the big thing, I want to hear the big message from God like we see in the Bible. You're not going to be even capable of hearing the big things from God unless you're listening to the small things from God. And if we're attuned, man, there are nudges that the Spirit has given us all the time. The nudges, just like, hey, put down your phone and grab your Bible. Hey, turn off the radio while you're driving, and just take this time to pray. Hey, instead of sitting in your own anger, go and apologize to her for what you did. The Holy Spirit is moving and nudging and leading us all the time, and some of us are ignoring the small nudges because we're waiting for the big ones to come. We're not going to be capable of hearing the big ones unless we're listening to the small ones.
Dan Franklin: [00:31:45] And so here's what I want to invite you to do, just look up right now. This isn't magic, but I think all four of these are really borne out in Scripture. And here's what I want to invite you to do, what I want to invite you to do is to identify the one of these four that God right now is sort of nudging you towards saying, focus on that one. We all need all four of these, but maybe there's one where you're like, you know what? The Bible just has fallen out of having any role in my life, I need to focus there. Some of you were like, the Bible, I'm doing good, but I do not pray, I need to pray. Some of you are like, I'm isolated, I need to be around other believers, even if it means getting out of my comfort zone and coming to a church event that I don't know how it's going to go. And some of you right now are going to say, I've been turning a deaf ear to the nudges all the time, and it's time to just start listening. Don't try to do everything at once, just ask what is the one of these four that God is directing your heart toward to take a next step?
Dan Franklin: [00:32:51] And here's the final thing I want to say about the Holy Spirit to make sure we get; do you know who the Holy Spirit is a big fan of? The Holy Spirit is a big fan of Jesus. Do you know who the Spirit wants us focused on all the time, he wants us focused on Jesus. There's no rivalry between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. If we're thinking about Jesus all the time, the Spirit's not, like, hey; the Spirit's like, good, that's who I'm directing your attention to.
Dan Franklin: [00:33:21] And so what we get to do next is we get to direct all of our attention on to the Lord Jesus, and what he did for us through his sacrifice as we prepare to take communion. So if you're going to be assisting with communion, you can head to the back right now as we prepare for it, we get to remember that Jesus had his body broken, and had his blood shed so that we could get into the family of God, and so that we could then later on receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a gift that we receive because of the sacrifice of Jesus. Jesus made us the children of God, and the Holy Spirit seals us in that position.
Dan Franklin: [00:34:05] So as we get ready to take communion, let's take it with celebration, let's take it with joy, let's take it with the remembrance of the price that Jesus paid, and let's take it also rejoicing that part of the spoils of the victory that Jesus won is that we get the Holy Spirit.
Dan Franklin: [00:34:26] Father, thank you for the gift of the Spirit. Thank you for Pentecost Sunday, when we get to celebrate the great gift that you've given us, that you have chosen to dwell in us and among us. God, we love you for this, we can't imagine the deep love that you have and the deep grace that you show through this. Seal us by your Spirit, convince us of your presence, and remind us of your sacrifice. And Father, may you receive all of the glory, all of the praise, and all of the rightful credit for all that you've done. In Jesus' name, Amen.
Recorded in Upland, California.
Jeremiah Shabazz: [00:00:19] Good morning, my name is Jeremiah Shabazz, and I have the fun job of working with the two-year-olds in Life Kid Ministries. I'm thankful to be a student at Exit83 Ministries as well. Today I'll be reading from Acts chapter 2, verses 1 through 4, "When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them." This is God's Word.
Dan Franklin: [00:00:56] Amen. You can grab a seat. Good morning. Thanks, Jeremiah, for that. So, obviously, and Jeff just mentioned it a few moments ago, but tomorrow is a holiday which we all know, today is also a holiday, some of us may know about it, and some of us may not. For those of you who know what holiday is today, all right, Pentecost, good guess. In case you were like, I didn't know, but I'm guessing by the scripture that was read today is the holiday of Pentecost. Which if you're sort of like me, and you grew up in not a very liturgical church, that's not something that you may be familiar with, but it is something that Christians all over the globe celebrate on this Sunday. And Pentecost is an Old Testament festival that the Jewish people would celebrate, and it took place 50 days after the last Sunday in the Passover festival, so that's actually the name Pentecost means 50th day. And it was something meant to celebrate the harvest and to celebrate God's provision for his people. But for us as believers in Jesus, we celebrate something even more significant on Pentecost because it was on the holiday of Pentecost that the story, we just heard read took place, that God gave the Holy Spirit to his church. And so this morning, we're taking a break from our series through the Gospel of Matthew, and we are just going to take time to celebrate Pentecost by doing a couple of things.
Dan Franklin: [00:02:25] Today we'll be very focused on the Holy Spirit, and so the two things that we're hoping to do is, number one, to be able to take in and celebrate the gift that God has given us in the Holy Spirit. And number two, then to ask the question, what does it look like for us to, in a daily way, live receiving that gift of the Holy Spirit? So the service will unfold a little bit differently than how we normally do it, I'm going to be up here talking through the passage that Jeremiah just read for about 15 minutes, and we'll talk about Acts 2 verses 1 through 4, and what it means that God has given us his Spirit. Then we'll have an opportunity to respond with some singing as we celebrate what God has done in giving us the Spirit. And then I'll be back up again to talk for about another 15 minutes from Galatians 5, about what it means to walk by the Spirit. And then after that, we'll get to respond again with songs and with taking communion together. So that's how things are going to unfold.
Dan Franklin: [00:03:26] But just as we get started, we're going to be very focused on talking about the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is probably the most mysterious member of the Trinity for any of us who are believers. Which, by the way, just talking about the Trinity, that's enough to make your mind meld. Am I right? I mean, we're like, all right, we believe in one God, one God spoke everything into creation, there aren't many gods and he's the king God. There is one God, but that one God exists not as an individual in isolation, but as a community of persons. And he's not a split personality, and it's not three gods, it's one God, three persons. And as we're thinking about the Father, I think we can kind of get our minds around it. All right, the Father, he is the one that initiates creation, he is the one that sets the plan of redemption in order, he sort of is the initiator. We can get our minds around the Son because we get to read in the gospels, like the Gospel of Matthew, and we see Jesus, the Word made Flesh, we get our minds around the Son. But I think the temptation when we start to talk about the Holy Spirit is to start to talk about the Spirit as an it. Like we got the father who's a he, we've got the Son who's a he, and we've got the Spirit, and we're sort of like it, as if the Spirit is this impersonal force that we sort of interact with, and that's not at all how the Spirit is presented in the New Testament.
Dan Franklin: [00:05:00] I could do this for a while but let me just give you a quick survey of some of the things said about the Spirit in the New Testament. The Spirit can be grieved, that's Ephesians chapter 5, verse 30, you can grieve the Spirit. A force is not grieved, but the Holy Spirit is personal, and he is sometimes grieved. James chapter 4, verse 5 says, the Spirit has desires. Jesus says, in John chapter 14, verse 26, that the Spirit teaches us and reminds us. And Paul says in Romans 8 that the Spirit prays for us. So the whole time that the Spirit is described, there's this description of a person that we're engaging with, not a force that we're trying to harness. We are engaging with a very person, a divine person, who is given to us, and who is given to us at Pentecost 2000 years ago.
Dan Franklin: [00:05:59] And so let's take some time now, we're just going to walk through these four verses that we get in Acts Chapter 2, about the coming of the Spirit. And we read first in verse 1, "When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place.". And the ‘they’ being talked about here is about 120 believers, as described in chapter 1, who were gathered together and waiting. So maybe they were praying together, which it seems like they often did. Maybe they were just having a sweet time of togetherness as early believers, but about 120, so not just the 12 apostles, but all sorts of other believers also. And if you're wondering why they were waiting, it's because of something that Jesus said to them back in chapter 1, verses 4 and 5 he said, “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. 5For John baptized with a water, but in a few days you will be baptized with b the Holy Spirit.” So here they are all waiting, as Jesus told them to, for this gift that they would receive.
Dan Franklin: [00:07:13] And in verse 2, we read of the event where that gift was given, "Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting." Now, when you think of one word to describe what's going on here, probably the appropriate word to describe this would be the word power. Now, let's look back at chapter 1 of Acts again. Acts chapter 1, verse eight, the words of Jesus, "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you." And if you read throughout the New Testament, there are all kinds of ways that the Spirit brings power. He brings the power for us to be bold, just as he emboldened the prophets in the Old Testament and the Apostles in the New Testament. The Spirit comes upon us in order to give us spiritual gifts so that we're able to serve one another, that's part of how its power comes upon us. And eventually, in our journey through the Gospel of Matthew, we'll get to chapter 12, and in chapter 12 we have Jesus indicating that his miracles were all done by the power of the Holy Spirit. When the Holy Spirit comes, he comes with power. He is not God's impersonal power, but He is the agent through which power comes to all of us.
Dan Franklin: [00:08:39] And we'll talk about this later on when I'm up here the second time, but one of the main ways that the Spirit brings power is he brings power for us not to be stuck in sin and in fear and in dysfunction. So I'm not going to ask for a show of hands, but if anybody in here feels stuck in some area of your life, the Holy Spirit wants to get us unstuck. And again, we'll talk more about this later.
Dan Franklin: [00:09:08] The Holy Spirit comes, and he comes with power, and just imagine he is interrupting this, whether it was a prayer service or a fellowship service of about 120 people. We'll just think about this for a second, and we'll talk about this more later on, but do you think it's possible that sometimes we might have a plan for our day and the Holy Spirit might have a different plan? That was possible here, I don't know if Peter had a whole list of what they were going to do or he was like, hey, I'm going to open up in prayer, and then Mary's going to pray, and then John's going to close us out at the end, and then after that, we'll have some food. Whatever the plan was, it wasn't this, the violent sound of a rushing wind comes and fills the house where they're sitting.
Dan Franklin: [00:09:49] And then we read this in verse 3, "They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them." Now tongues of fire, this is pretty weird, right? It's just like the fire, now, I'm not saying it wouldn't have been freaky, but they might have understood the idea of fire because fire frequently was how God manifested his presence when he wanted to do this in a physical way. So, you know, the burning bush, and other instances like that, all right fire as God's presence. In fact, if you see the graphic up there, it has to do with there's fire and then there's wind, these are the two symbols of the Spirit that we get in this passage. So the whole idea of fire, but the fire doesn't stay all just in one spot, the fire separates itself and it says into tongues of fire that rested on each one of them. And the whole tongues of fire thing, this is weird, here's what I think is going on, I think it's actually much more simple. We probably haven't each spent a lot of time ruminating on the shape of the tongue, but the shape of the tongue is a little bit like the shape of a flame that flickers over a candle. I think that's all that he's describing here. So instead of the fire just coming in and resting in one spot, the fire separates, and rests on who, on each of them, on each person in the room. Not just on Peter, not just on John, not just on Mary, on each one of them.
Dan Franklin: [00:11:20] And here's why this is so significant. The Holy Spirit, this is not the first mention of the Holy Spirit, and this is not the first time the Holy Spirit did something miraculous. If you read the Old Testament and the Holy Spirit shows up frequently, but he shows up temporarily to empower someone to do something specific. So the three most common instances are the Holy Spirit comes upon a king to empower him to rule, or to a prophet to empower them to speak, or to a warrior to empower him to win a battle. Those are the three most frequent occurrences of the Spirit in the Old Testament. And the Spirit would come upon someone to do that, and then would depart afterwards. This is why, in Psalm 51, when David writes a psalm of repentance after his adultery with Bathsheba, he says, "Create in me a clean heart." And then after that, he says, "God, don't take your Holy Spirit from me." And David's crying out about that because he saw God do that with King Saul. When Saul became king, God sent the Holy Spirit upon him, and when Saul rebelled, God took the Holy Spirit away from him.
Dan Franklin: [00:12:35] But what's happening here is different because God is giving his Spirit to indwell in us forever. And then also because the Spirit is not coming just on the prophets, just on the kings, or just on the warriors, but on each one of us. If you're in this room and you're a believer in Jesus, the Holy Spirit is dwelling in you. It doesn't matter if you're 70 years old or seven years old, you have the Holy Spirit dwelling within you. And just as we get this amazing thing in Genesis 1, in this story of God creating man in his image, and other nations in the ancient Near East would have said, well, the Kings are made in God's image, or the warriors are made in God's image. But God says all human beings are made in my image in a similar way, now, every believer gets the Holy Spirit dwelling within them.
Dan Franklin: [00:13:29] And then look at what the Holy Spirit does right away in verse 4, "All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them." So right away the Spirit comes upon them, and a miracle happens. Now, it would take a long time if I was going to walk through everything that the New Testament says about this whole idea of speaking in tongues; different sermon, different time; I don't know, different 12 sermons, different times. We're not going to delve deep into that now, there are different times in the New Testament where it's murkier about what's happening when somebody's speaking in tongues. But actually, in Acts 2, it's pretty clear what's happening. The other tongues, at least in this context, are other known languages that people really spoke. And the reason that we know that first of all, tongue just means language. But the reason why we know that's what's happening here is because as this story unfolds, all of the believers go out and they're speaking about Jesus in other tongues and Jews who had come for the Feast of Pentecost from all different parts of the world all recognize their own mother tongue. They recognize their own language. So they're saying, all right, I'm nodding my head right now, sort of translating from Hebrew, I'm hearing the gospel preached in my own language because God's supernaturally empowered the early believers to speak in languages that they had never been taught.
Dan Franklin: [00:14:56] And here's the big thing I want to make sure we all catch in this, we are celebrating that God has given us the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit dwells within us to empower us, to confirm us as God's children, to seal us for the fact that one day we will have a final resurrection and that we're part of God's family. The Holy Spirit does all of that for us. But I want you to know God has given you the Holy Spirit, not just for you, and God gave the Apostles the Holy Spirit not just for them, because as soon as they receive the Holy Spirit, the Gospel of Jesus goes out through them. You have spiritual gifts, and those spiritual gifts aren't for you, just as this miracle was not just for the apostles and the early believers. God spreads his message when he gives us his Spirit, and when his Spirit comes in power.
Dan Franklin: [00:15:50] And I just want to pause here and say, guys, what a gift. Wait until you've received the gift the Father has promised, this is the gift, the gift is God himself coming to dwell within us, calming our hearts, bringing us peace, empowering us for things that we would never be able to have victory over, that is the gift that we celebrate at Pentecost. Now, we're going to talk later to make sure we are not neglecting this gift that we've been given.
Dan Franklin: [00:16:28] But we want to pause right now, and we just want to celebrate. One of the things that Jesus said in John 14 when he was getting ready to leave is he said, I won't leave you orphans, so I'm going to send another helper like me to be with you. Jesus is not standing with us in the way that he was with the Apostles, but the Holy Spirit is with us, God is with us. What a gift we have.
Dan Franklin: [00:16:55] Now, there's a lot in this passage, we're not going to go through all of it in detail. In fact, as some of you will remember, about a year ago, we went through this whole extended passage and took like five weeks on it, so I just want us to be able to get the big picture in this passage. And one of the reasons why I wanted us to talk about this is because of how this passage begins, "So I say walk by the Spirit." We have this great gift, the Holy Spirit is within us, and yet we all know that we are not twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, all living in the fullness of what God has empowered us to be able to live in. And so we want to talk about what could we do, what are the choices that we could make in order to really live in the full reception of this gift that God has given us in the Holy Spirit? And that's what I think Paul is going for in this passage when he says, "So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh." Paul is making clear that there's a battle going on inside of us, if you're not a Christian, you probably feel this, You feel at times that you're like, I want to do what I feel like I'm supposed to do, but it's hard to do. And the fact is, for those of us who are believers, that battle doesn't end, but the nature of that battle changes because now we have the Holy Spirit.
Dan Franklin: [00:18:17] He says, walk by the Spirit, don't walk by the flesh. And the flesh is sort of a catchall just to describe that there still is a part of us, even as believers in Jesus, there still is a part of us that just craves the instant gratification of whatever I can get right now, that's what we're battling. So we have these warring ideas going on inside of us. The Holy Spirit is leading us one way, the flesh is leading us another way, Paul says later on in verse 18, If you walk by the Spirit, you won't gratify the desires of the flesh.
Dan Franklin: [00:18:50] So I know this might be overly simplistic, but just think about this for a second. If you have something in your life right now that you are like, I want freedom from, I want freedom from this lust, I want freedom from this anger, I want freedom from this sort of pettiness or jealousy or deception or laziness. like, I want victory in this. Paul doesn't say, well, the way you get victory is you just focus all of your attention on the flesh and try to defeat it. He says, focus all of your attention on walking by the Spirit, because if you're walking by the Spirit, you can't because the Spirit is leading you in a different direction. There's a battle going on inside of us. And when he says Walk by the Spirit, I think he's saying in essence, the same thing that he means in Ephesians chapter 5, when he says, "Be filled with the Spirit." You have, if you're a believer, you have the Holy Spirit, he is within you. But there are decisions that we make of how much we are going to walk and step, how much we are going to live, filled and led by the Spirit.
Dan Franklin: [00:19:57] And something that I love is, as you read, first of all, I love that he talks about walking by the Spirit because this is again, a relational idea. Every Thursday morning, Karina and I go for a walk together, and it's this great experience where we're walking side by side because we're connected in a relationship. So I love the idea of we're walking with the Spirit, we're walking by the Spirit. But here's the mistake that we could make, the mistake that we can make is we could think, I'm walking and I'm inviting the Holy Spirit to come with me. So I sort of, I have my plans, I have my agenda, I have my goals, that's where I'm walking, and I'm inviting the Holy Spirit to come join me on that walk.
Dan Franklin: [00:20:38] I want you to hear something that He says later on in this same passage in verse 25, he says, "Let us keep in step with the Spirit." This is very clarifying. Who is in charge of the walk? Yeah, it's not me, it's the Holy Spirit. I'm trying to keep up, I am trying to keep in step with him because he is going somewhere. He is the leader; I am the follower. So this walk and it is a walk. We are walking in relationship, but I'm not in charge of the walk. The Holy Spirit is the one leading, and we are the ones following. We are yielding our will to him, which means that they're going to have to be different parts during the day where we make the adjustment, where we say, this was my goal and this was my plan for the day, and this was my agenda for this, but God has a different idea and I would rather try to keep in step with the Holy Spirit than try to harness him to keep in step with me.
Dan Franklin: [00:21:44] Now, Paul says something else in between these two statements, he talks about the acts of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit. And I just want to spend a moment on this to clarify what he's doing in these sections because you could read verses 19 through 21 and say there's a list of like 11 things that I'm not supposed to do. So 11 things, try not to do them. And then we get to verses 22 and 23 with the fruit of the Spirit, and we're like, all right, there are 8 or 9 things that I should try really hard to do. So try not to do the acts of the flesh and try really hard to do the fruit of the Spirit. And what I want to make clear is that's not what Paul is doing here, Paul is saying if you're walking by the flesh, verses 19 through 21 are going to happen, and that's what will emerge. You know, sexual immorality, jealousy, fits of rage, all that stuff, that will come because that's the evidence of walking by the flesh. Verses 22 and 23 is Paul giving us a picture of saying, here's what's going to happen in your life if you are walking by the Spirit. And I think even more than us looking at those qualities and saying I should try harder to do those, Paul is telling us and maybe take it as the fruit of the Spirit, so the fruit of the Spirit, Paul is saying wouldn't that taste good? Wouldn't it taste good to live that way? Wouldn't that be great if love and joy and peace and forbearance and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control, wouldn't that be good if that was your life? That's what happens if you walk by the Spirit, that is the evidence of the Spirit.
Dan Franklin: [00:23:13] And by the way, here's why this is so significant and why this passage is one of the reasons why it's so meaningful to me. the Spirit is the worker of miracles. the Spirit is the giver of spiritual gifts. the Spirit is doing all kinds of amazing, miraculous things. But when Paul gets down to it and says, do you want to recognize what a life led by the Spirit looks like? He talks about these things, he says the real evidence that the Spirit is there is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. That is the miraculous life marked by the Spirit, that you have love in a world that is divided by enmity, that you have joy in a world of grief, that you have peace in a world of chaos, that you have forbearance. And by the way, do you know what forbearance means? It means patience, that you have forbearance in the most impatient culture that has ever existed. That you have kindness and goodness, and that's sort of generosity in a culture that's all about me and all about myself. That you have faithfulness in a culture where anybody will break a promise if a better offer comes along. That you would have gentleness in a culture where we're just trying to destroy the other side. And that you would have self-control in a culture of self-indulgence. That's the miracle of being marked by the Spirit. And Paul tells us that in verses 22 and 23 saying, wouldn't that taste good? Man, don't you want that? Don't you want that miraculous transformation? This is the fruit of the Spirit leading us, and this is what we show to other people to give them a taste of the kind of transformation that God brings. When Paul says walk by the Spirit, that's what he's inviting us to.
Dan Franklin: [00:25:11] So here's what I want to do, I want to spend a few minutes on a very important question. We can read Galatians 5, and the command is clear, the command is walk by the Spirit, but let's spend a little bit of time talking about it. I'm going to give four practical ways that we walk by the Spirit. And while these aren't directly found here in this passage, I think that these are all found throughout the New Testament as ways that we walk by the Spirit. Some of them are going to be no surprise to you, and some of them might be a little bit of a surprise.
Dan Franklin: [00:25:42] But I'll put the first two up because they are going to be no surprise at all, immerse yourself in scripture and be prayerful. Some of you, especially if you grew up and you went to Sunday school, and then you went to youth group, and now you're involved in church, you're like, yeah, all the time I feel like I'm being told to read the Bible and pray more. Like, read the Bible and pray, I've been told this all the time. That's for a good reason, that's not because your Sunday school teachers and your youth leaders, and your pastors are very uncreative, that's because these are the ways, these are at the core of the ways that believers for 2000 years have sought to draw near to God. Do you know who wrote the Bible? Yeah, even more specifically. Yeah, good guess that's what we're talking about today, the Holy Spirit inspired the writers of the Bible. So if you're like, I want to know what the Holy Spirit is saying, read the Bible, that's what the Holy Spirit has said and that's what He's saying. And He brings the word to bear on our hearts in a new and fresh way when we're reading diligently and responsibly.
Dan Franklin: [00:26:49] And I'm going to guess that some of you, some of you in here, you are regular Bible readers, you have habits that you've set in place where you're regularly seeking God in His word. If we're all honest, it's like sometimes you read and you're like, all right, that's fine. Other times you read and it's really this rich time where you're like, all right, it's different. That's okay, you're still getting God's word. Some of you, you might describe yourself as like, sporadic readers. You're like, all right, I read and then I kind of don't for a week, and then I read again and. All right, that's good, like, you're getting in there, you want to get further in there. Maybe even looking at the summer months, you might want to say, all right, what's a goal I can look for in the summer months? And what I'm going to say might seem counterintuitive, but if you're like I read the Bible maybe once a week, I'm going to advise you, don't make your goal to say I'm going to read the Bible every day. It'd be great to make your goal that you're going to read the Bible two days next week, or three days next week, just to have more of the Bible's influence in your life.
Dan Franklin: [00:27:51] And by the way, also on Tuesday, we start summer Bible study around here. If you've ever been involved in summer Bible study, you know that it's not just going to be that me or somebody else is going to get up and teach, it's going to be that you will be around the table learning how to study the Bible on your own and digging in. Read the Bible, immerse yourself in Scripture, and be prayerful.
Dan Franklin: [00:28:14] And if we are looking to draw near to God, what better way than by talking to him? And we know from Romans 8, that the Holy Spirit is with us in our prayers, that he's even fixing our prayers when we don't know what to pray for. So if you're looking at this and you're like, Dan, get a little bit more creative. Like, read the Bible and pray, for heaven's sake, read the Bible and pray. Don't think that you're smarter than the thousands and millions of believers who have come before you, read the Bible and pray.
Dan Franklin: [00:28:43] But I've got two others, the third one is to be around other believers. For some of you, Sunday mornings may be the only time during your week that you are around other believers. In the Book of First Corinthians, Paul twice talks about us being the temple of the Holy Spirit. But he's very creative, he talks about it in two different ways. In chapter 6, he talks about it in a very individual way, your individual body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, and he is dwelling in you. But in chapter 3, he talks about it in a corporate way. He says, we are the temple of the Holy Spirit, and he dwells in our midst. If you are all alone in the park, the Holy Spirit is with you. But if you're with a whole bunch of believers, the Holy Spirit is with you and with them and with him and with her and you're all together. And if you are stuck in some way in your life, you're like, I can't get out of this rut, the chances are pretty good that if you're around a whole bunch of other believers, somebody else has been in that rut that you're in, and they're going to be able to encourage your heart and give you a way out. Be around other believers, find a way to make it happen. And again, if you're like my life group has taken a break, summer Bible study, men's Bible study, there are other ways to stay involved, even if it's not a formal church event, just gathering together. Say, hey, I'm going to get these five friends together and we're just going to pray together once a week, be around other believers.
Dan Franklin: [00:30:12] And finally, the fourth one is, to listen to the little nudges. Now, Jesus said something that I think is profound and it also haunts me in some ways because he said the one who is faithful in a small thing will be faithful in a great thing. And some of us are like, I want to hear from God. Like, I want to hear from God. And I want to hear him and suddenly be like, what's the big thing? Quit your job, and move to Burundi or, you know, stop this, and become a pastor, or marry her, or break up with them. I don't know, whatever it is, you are waiting for the big thing. Some of you right now are like, no, I don't want the big thing right now, that sounds terrifying. But some of us are like, I want the big thing, I want to hear the big message from God like we see in the Bible. You're not going to be even capable of hearing the big things from God unless you're listening to the small things from God. And if we're attuned, man, there are nudges that the Spirit has given us all the time. The nudges, just like, hey, put down your phone and grab your Bible. Hey, turn off the radio while you're driving, and just take this time to pray. Hey, instead of sitting in your own anger, go and apologize to her for what you did. The Holy Spirit is moving and nudging and leading us all the time, and some of us are ignoring the small nudges because we're waiting for the big ones to come. We're not going to be capable of hearing the big ones unless we're listening to the small ones.
Dan Franklin: [00:31:45] And so here's what I want to invite you to do, just look up right now. This isn't magic, but I think all four of these are really borne out in Scripture. And here's what I want to invite you to do, what I want to invite you to do is to identify the one of these four that God right now is sort of nudging you towards saying, focus on that one. We all need all four of these, but maybe there's one where you're like, you know what? The Bible just has fallen out of having any role in my life, I need to focus there. Some of you were like, the Bible, I'm doing good, but I do not pray, I need to pray. Some of you are like, I'm isolated, I need to be around other believers, even if it means getting out of my comfort zone and coming to a church event that I don't know how it's going to go. And some of you right now are going to say, I've been turning a deaf ear to the nudges all the time, and it's time to just start listening. Don't try to do everything at once, just ask what is the one of these four that God is directing your heart toward to take a next step?
Dan Franklin: [00:32:51] And here's the final thing I want to say about the Holy Spirit to make sure we get; do you know who the Holy Spirit is a big fan of? The Holy Spirit is a big fan of Jesus. Do you know who the Spirit wants us focused on all the time, he wants us focused on Jesus. There's no rivalry between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. If we're thinking about Jesus all the time, the Spirit's not, like, hey; the Spirit's like, good, that's who I'm directing your attention to.
Dan Franklin: [00:33:21] And so what we get to do next is we get to direct all of our attention on to the Lord Jesus, and what he did for us through his sacrifice as we prepare to take communion. So if you're going to be assisting with communion, you can head to the back right now as we prepare for it, we get to remember that Jesus had his body broken, and had his blood shed so that we could get into the family of God, and so that we could then later on receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a gift that we receive because of the sacrifice of Jesus. Jesus made us the children of God, and the Holy Spirit seals us in that position.
Dan Franklin: [00:34:05] So as we get ready to take communion, let's take it with celebration, let's take it with joy, let's take it with the remembrance of the price that Jesus paid, and let's take it also rejoicing that part of the spoils of the victory that Jesus won is that we get the Holy Spirit.
Dan Franklin: [00:34:26] Father, thank you for the gift of the Spirit. Thank you for Pentecost Sunday, when we get to celebrate the great gift that you've given us, that you have chosen to dwell in us and among us. God, we love you for this, we can't imagine the deep love that you have and the deep grace that you show through this. Seal us by your Spirit, convince us of your presence, and remind us of your sacrifice. And Father, may you receive all of the glory, all of the praise, and all of the rightful credit for all that you've done. In Jesus' name, Amen.
Recorded in Upland, California.
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