Letting The Inside Out

Letting The Inside Out

NLF Pentecost 6/8/2003 2 Chronicles 34:1-18 Acts 1:1-8

Let’s suppose for a moment that you were in a room with hundreds of bags hanging overhead. All of the bags say the same thing on the outside. All of the bags look just like each other. All of the bags are filled with sand except for one. There is one bag that’s filled with tiny diamonds worth more money than you can ever dream of having. Lying on the floor next to you is a spear with a sharp point on it. If you only had 5 minutes to find the diamonds what would you do?

Now you could get a ladder and try to open the top of the bag and see what’s inside. You could get a ladder and try to put your arms around each bag and squeeze it to see how it feels. Or you could just pick up that spear and run from bag to bag jabbing it and moving on? You know that whatever is in that bag is going to come pouring out when you put enough pressure on it to cause it to open. Now keep this in mind for the rest of the message.

In our Old Testament reading we came into contact with a king by the name of Josiah. Josiah was on of the best kings in terms of faithfulness to God and he was the last of the good kings. The interesting thing about Josiah is that he became king at age 8. We were thinking about going to third grade when he was becoming king. But at age 8 the bible says, “he was doing right in the eyes of the Lord.” We are never to young to start serving God.

At age 16 we find that he is very serious about God and is actively seeking to know God. At age 20 he is removing everything out of his country that keeps the people from worshipping the true God. He destroys all the false gods that people worshipped. At age 26 he is repairing the temple where everybody worshiped the true God.

Josiah is a good example of what’s on the inside of a person will show up in what he or she does on the outside. Because he decided to get to know God early in his life, his life looked like a person living for God.

Today we celebrate what’s known as Pentecost. After Jesus died on the cross and rose again from the dead, Jesus did not go straight back into heaven and remain there. For about 40 days after his resurrection, Jesus came and was teaching the disciples. How many of us could handle a formerly dead man teaching us something for forty days?

Before he finally leaves, he tells the disciples, “You are to wait in Jerusalem in order to be baptized by the Holy Spirit. You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you will tell others about me in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and all over the world.” After Jesus told the disciples this he left and went back into heaven.

Now the disciples were scared to death to tell others about Jesus. That was a good way to get into serious trouble, because the people who had killed Jesus in the first place also wanted to get rid of everybody who was claiming Jesus had risen from the dead. So when they met together, they did so secretly and behind closed and locked doors.

Then the day of Pentecost came. Now Pentecost was a name of festival that took place to celebrate the grain harvest. Pente means 50. This festival took place on the fiftieth day. So a big celebration was going on in Jerusalem and people had come from all over the empire to celebrate. The disciples and believers in Christ, a group of about 120 people had been in a room praying in Jerusalem.

While they were praying, the building started shaking, and there was a sound like a tornado was coming through. The people sitting down on the floor praying looked up and saw this fire in the shape of a tongue hovering over head. The next thing they knew, the huge tongue split into several little tongues and landed on the top of each one of them. All of them immediately got up and started preaching. The only thing was, they were all preaching in a different language.

People from all over the world who had come to Jersualem were shocked to hear these people who had never learned their languages, preaching to them fluently. It was as if, one day while Tony was preaching a group of Chinese, Koreans, Germans and Nigerians came into the service and all of a sudden not only did Tony stop speaking English and started in Chinese, but Scottie, Josh, and Trionna all jumped up to a microphone with Scotty speaking Korean, Josh German, and Trionna one of the Nigerian dialects. Not only this, but everybody understood the preaching at the same time.