Sermon Central
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Pentecostal Power
Contributed by George Rennau on May 18, 2002 (message contributor)
Summary: A sermon for Pentecost Sunday
Title: Pentecostal Power
Text: Acts 2:1-4
The Church was born at Pentecost
And Pentecost has become a Sacred Holiday on the church calendar.
Of course, Pentecost has always been a holiday
A celebration of the harvest
For Israel, it was a harvest of grain
For the Church, Pentecost is a great harvest of the Spirit.
Because of Pentecost we reap a harvest
Power to be a witness
Ability to be renewed and transformed
Life in his presence
Because of Pentecost, His power is abundantly available to us that believe.
We are a Pentecostal Church
Meaning we identify and seek after the fullness of the Spirit just as they did at Pentecost
I believe that we need a harvest of the Spirit of God in our lives once again.
As witnesses we cannot afford to stop seeking to be filled with His power
As The church we cannot afford to remain the same, we need to be transformed
As His Children We cannot afford to ignore His immediate presence
We as a church need that Pentecostal power once again.
Prayer…
I. WE NEED THE HOLY SPIRIT BECAUSE WE NEED POWER to witness
On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: "Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about.
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."
Illustration:
-- A lady went to a jeweler to have her watch fixed. He disappeared to the back and soon returned with it running perfectly.
--Surprised, she asked how he could fix it so soon. He told her it only needed a new battery.
--Battery? Battery? No body said anything about a battery. I’ve been winding it every morning!"
--A lot of Christians do not realize the inner power of the Holy Spirit to handle things they think they must take into their own hands.
A. His power is available to US TO COMPLETE THE TASK BEFORE US IN THE HARVEST and he wants us to complete the task in his power and not by our ingenuity
1. You can see from our text that God did not dare ask His people to do His work without giving them the ability to do it.
This is why they were asked to wait in Jerusalem until power from on high descended upon them.
The message of Acts 1:8 is simple Apart from the Holy Spirit no-one can preach the Gospel as God wants them to do.
with the Holy Spirit we can make a difference
1 Cor. 2:4-5
My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, [5] so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.
Without the Power of the Holy Spirit the message of the Gospel rest in man’s wisdom
the Bible tells us in 2 Tim 3:5 that in the Last days the Church will have a "form of Godliness, but deny the power thereof"
That is a way of saying that we the Church will be putting more emphasis on externals [show] rather than on internals [empowerment by the Holy Spirit]
God forbid
3. We need to be like The New Testament Church that saw the baptism of the Holy Spirit as the NORMAL experience for empowering believers to preach the Gospel
They knew as we should understand that without Him we Won’t make much of a difference in this world.
ILLUS:
The human body is a most remarkable machine. It can maintain a constant temperature of 98.6 degrees no matter what the weather is outside. Whether a man is at the Arctic Circle or the equator, his body temperature is about the same.
There is an inner mechanism that makes the difference.
For the Christian the Holy Spirit is that inner Mechanism
To help us make a difference in this world
II. WE NEED THE HOLY SPIRIT BECAUSE WE as a church we NEED TO BE TRANSFORMED
When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. [2] Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. [3] They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. [4] All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
1. Why WAS THERE A the symbol of fire when the believers received the Holy Spirit?
a. Fire is the symbol of transformation!
