What is Pentecost? How the Church Began

Well, it's great to be here. Happy birthday church. Do you know there were 2025 years old on this day? Happy birthday church. It's a wonderful thing. That's what Pentecost is all about. Um, and I just want to bring greetings from our church. Bridge Church. Bridge Community Church. Uh, we're right now in Fort Washington, part of the communion. Uh, I know that they have been praying for this time here, and, uh, just want to bring greetings from our church to our our sister church here now and Liberti Communion. We're delighted to be a part of that. So today is Pentecost Sunday. Um, I love thinking about that. Um, going back over just the text has been a great joy for me because I have seen the power of the Holy Spirit in so many different ways. But I wanted to start off today's sermon by describing a scene. Now picture this country, Eswatini. It's a small country in South Africa. And, uh, there's a Portuguese restaurant called Vincenzo's in the city of Manzini. They only have two cities in Manzini. And sitting at the table is a brother from Mozambique, a pastor from Ivory Park township in South Africa, a married pastoral couple from Zimbabwe, a missionary couple from the United States, an African-American pastor from Philadelphia, two deaf pastors from Eswatini, a couple. The husband is from Iraq and the wife is from South Africa and myself and, um, quite a diverse group, don't you think? And we're sitting down and we're having a meal together, and there's all this banter and this laughter, and people are all around us and Eswatini, they're sort of looking and thinking, what is going on with this group? And it's such a diverse group. And like, how did who how are they even together? Like, what really brought these people together and they seem so much like family. What are we going on? And if I were to answer that question for them, simply, I would say how this happened. Pentecost. It happened because Pentecost. But what lies behind the answer? Why and how? Why and how? Because of Pentecost has this happened? And that's what I want to explain in the sermon today. And then talk a little bit about the implications for us here today, who celebrate this birthday and the outpouring of The Spirit.

But here's what has to happen. I need to start all the way back in the book of Genesis. I need to start in Genesis 11, the day God came down to see the Tower of Babel. That man was building to reach the heavens and be like God. And what God does is he come down and he surveys the folly of this pride. And what he does is he confuses everybody by creating languages. And now, instead of one shared language for humanity, there were many. This was the beginning of ethnic diversity and disunity, ethnic pride and nationalism, prejudice, racism. This was the beginning of all these things. And in the midst of this, God calls Abraham out Genesis 12 to make him the father of a nation that God will call his people, a people he will love and make a covenant with. And in that covenant, as he blesses them, he's calling them to have a purpose of blessing the families and the nations of the earth. And he will do this through a righteous king whose government will never end. A servant king who brings peace, not war. 4000 years pass and this has not yet happened. And the world is still at war with God and nation against nation. But there is a supernatural birth announced by angels in Bethlehem, in Judea. The promised king has been born. His name is Jesus. He will be the servant king, the righteous servant of God. And he will bring peace. But his peace will be peace with God, reconciliation with God, forgiveness because of his blood. And as he walked this earth, he was the radiance of God's glory, and his sacrifice and death. Bring redemption, bring forgiveness, bring reconciliation with God for all who believe. His victory over death by his resurrection and rising on the third day brings eternal life. Death is defeated, and then after his resurrection, he spends time with his disciples in his glorified body for 40 days. And during that time it says that he talked to them about the kingdom and about what was going to happen, and that he was going to leave them, and he needed to leave them to make room for the Holy Spirit to come and listen to these words. On this last day before he leaves, acts chapter one, verse eight. Then they gathered around him and asked him, Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom of Israel? And he said to them, it's not for you to know the times or dates the father has set by his own authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

He gives them these words. He starts walking away from them, and all of a sudden, as he's walking, he's sort of lifting up, and then a Shekinah glory cloud comes and he disappears into it. Now, I believe this is Jiuliani theology. I believe that in that very moment when he steps into heaven, it's the revelation five scene. The lamb who is worthy picks up the scroll that nobody else could pick up as he ascended. It's this beautiful picture of what he's doing, and now he's on the throne. How powerful is that? But the disciples are left looking up and the angels say, what are you doing? He's gone. Get out of here. Go do what you need to do. So what did the disciples do? They head back to Jerusalem. And they wait for the gift of the spirit. But how did they wait? Well, listen to acts chapter one, verses 12 through 14. Then the apostles returned to Jerusalem from the hill called the Mount of Olives, a Sabbath day's walk from the city. And when they arrived, they went upstairs to the room where they were staying. Those present were Peter, John, James, and Andrew, Philip, Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew. John, son of Alphaeus. Simon the Zealot. Judas, son of James. They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary, the mother of Jesus and with his brothers. So let's ask the question again. How did they wait? They were in constant prayer. They were in constant prayer. And this is important to know. And we're going to get back to the relationship between prayer and the Holy Spirit.

But for the moment, let's stay in real time as it's played out for the disciples, because ten days later, Luke describes what happens in acts chapter two, verses one through 12. When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly, a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven filled the whole house. Where they were sitting, they saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. And all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak in other tongues as the spirit enabled them. Now they were staying in Jerusalem, God fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. And when they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. Utterly amazed, they asked, Aren't all these who are speaking Galileans? They were. They were known sort of as the hillbillies of the Jewish population. How is it that each of us here hears them in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Perga and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene. Visitors from Rome, both Jews and converts to Judaism, Cretans and Arabs. We hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues. Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, what does this mean? Wow. Think about that for a second. I actually work with an African American pastor. We've. He's going with me to Eswatini numbers of times, and he will give testimony that one time he was on a street corner in the city in a Latino section of the city, and when he began proclaiming the gospel, he started speaking Spanish, and people understood him. Amen. That's what the Holy Spirit can do. This is what was going on. So just as the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus at his baptism to equip and empower him for his public ministry at Pentecost, the same spirit came upon the disciples to equip and empower them for their mission as witnesses to the world.

Now think about this. It says every nation was there under the world. Like nothing could have demonstrated more clearly than this that this was a multiracial, multinational, multilingual nature of the Kingdom of Christ. This was a dramatic reversal of the curse of Babel. a sign that nations will be gathered together in Christ. Listen to what Paul says in Ephesians two, verses 13 to 16. But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace. Who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross by which he put to death their hostility. Amen. Now go back to the table seen in Eswatini. And this is what God did. This was the impact of Pentecost. God did not remove all the languages. Instead, he harmonized them at a deeper level. Each person kept their own language, and yet they suddenly understood one another across the barriers of distinct languages hostile cultures, destructive histories. They were together again by faith in Jesus and the indwelling of His Holy Spirit. And even more. A day will come when we complete truly in Christ. God had finally remarried the peoples to build not a tower, but his church. Do I hear any Amen to that? So first Peter. Chapter two, verses four and five. As you come to him, the living stone, rejected by humans, but chosen by God and precious to him, you also like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. This is what the Holy Spirit began to do, right? The temple was no longer the temple in Jerusalem. It was each heart that now had Christ in it, the living stones that even in this moment we are building the church. We are the temples. And and we immediately see this in the book of acts. Let's do a little timeline. Acts two, verses 42 to 47. The people meet, they share bread together. They are doing the apostles teaching and they're praying. And what does it say? Daily, daily people are being added to their numbers. And then you move on to acts five. And there's there's now 5000, and multitudes are being saved. And then in Samaria, an entire town comes to the Lord. In acts nine, a great number of Gentiles. In acts 11, we get to acts 13, and Paul is with Barnabas, and they're going to send them out. Now we need to know something about that. They're in a city called Antioch. Antioch was sort of like Philadelphia. It was called a city of neighborhoods. And all the ethnic groups were in these cities in their little pockets in the neighborhood. Right. Now, I know about that because I grew up in an Italian parish in North Philadelphia. And I will tell you that I could go ten blocks down to almost Lehigh Avenue, and someone would come out the door and say, Giuliani, what are you doing down here? Does your mother know you're here? I'm going to call her up. You're hungry. Come on. Come on and eat. Right. That's the type of neighborhood I grew up in. And then there was the Irish neighborhood, and there was the Polish neighborhood. Well, this was the same thing in Antioch. But here's what happened. This group of people came and they were all diverse, and they were all living together. They didn't know what to do. What do we call these people? And finally they said, well, they believe in Christ. We should call their section of the city the Christian section. And that's where the word Christian came from. And you see how it was so impactful that there was diversity and unity and diversity as believers were believing in Christ. Even that early in acts 13, it was this wonderful thing that God was doing and he was moving through the nations. And what happens? Of course, they sent Paul and Barnabas out. And by the time we get to acts 28, less than a hundred years later, the witness and the gospel was going all the way to Rome, to the Capitol, inside the Imperial house, because Paul was a prisoner and shared the gospel there. Amen. The gospel was spreading. The Holy Spirit equipped and empowered and constantly at a prayer being unleashed. And the gospel was going forward. Now let's take it forward to today. Here we are. There's over 3 billion Christians in the world. We as a liberty communion of churches. You may not know this, maybe just getting used to the idea of being communion, but because I've now moving into being full time the director of Global and Local Mission in Mercy. I get the joy of doing this. Do you have any idea how many missionaries we have in our Liberty communion of churches? Of course not. We have 45 missionaries and covenant. 13 of those missionaries and partners have been sent out by you. Amen. Amen. So let's put a map up just to give you an idea of what's going on. Here's the map where all those those dots are. That's where we have missionaries. We are global. God is at work. We over the next couple years, you're going to get pictures of what's going on in the world. Do you know what the what God is doing among the Muslim populations in the Middle East? It's amazing what's going on. We have missionaries there who are going to come back here and tell us about it, because we're going to have global conferences, and we're going to have opportunity to have them send prayer updates, and you're going to get pictures of who they are, and we're going to join together in praying for them. Hallelujah. This is an Amen. This is who we are. So praise God you can take that down. I get I get crazy about that. And I preach or preach that.

Anyway, there we go. But it's exciting. And I want you to know that we're a part of this. And this is the impact of Pentecost and prayer unleashing the Holy Spirit. So here's a quote from John Stott. The kingdom of God is his rule set up in the lives of his people by the Holy Spirit. It is spread by witnesses. Get this not by soldiers, through the gospel of peace, and not a declaration of war, and by a work of the spirit, not by force of arms, political intrigue or revolutionary violence. Please get that. Our culture is falling into the temptation of thinking. The gospel goes by force of arms and political intrigue. It does not. It does not. It's the work of the Holy Spirit through people like you and me. This is the impact of Pentecost, and it continues through to you and I. Believers like us being witnesses across the globe, in our neighborhoods, our workplaces, our friends, our families and homes. We do this as disciples did, by first praying for the Holy Spirit to be poured with fresh winds. And we now begin to pray for revival, awakening, and renewal. Revival. The word revival sometimes gets misused. Revival means that the church itself is being revived, that God is coming with power among the people in the church and reinvigorating their faith, bringing them to a deeper repentance. Now, walking for the Lord. Awakening means when this happens in the church, all of a sudden we begin to see new conversions, people being led, hearts of stone being turned into hearts of flesh, dry bones being raised up, and renewal is the result of that. What is renewal all of a sudden? Your culture is changing because people's hearts have changed. Law can only do so much, but it cannot change a heart. The Holy Spirit changes the heart. Amen. The Holy Spirit changes the heart. So this is where we go, brothers and sisters. And, um, that's that's where I want to go and end this sermon with. This is the practical application that I would love for us to be thinking about. Is that the one universal ingredient? Of the spirit being poured out in new and powerful ways, whether it's in your children's lives, relatives, lives, people that you know, whether it's across the globe, it's prayer. Unleashing the Holy Spirit. Listen to what John Piper says in his quote. In the history of the church. The term revival in its most biblical sense has meant a sovereign work of God, in which the whole region of many churches, many Christians, has been lifted out of a spiritual indifference and worldliness. Lord, help us. Is that not our world into a conviction of sin, earnest desires for more of Christ and His Word, boldness and witness, purity of life, lots of conversions, joyful worship, and renewed commitment to missions. Hallelujah! Is that not the spirit saying, that's what we want to see, brothers and sisters. And here's the thing. This has happened. It's happened many times in our country in the past. You know, about the Great Awakenings in 1718 hundred, where thousands of people came to the Lord and the churches renewed. But what I want to do is I want to focus on just one little snippet. It's called the Businessmen's Man's revival. 1857, 58. There was this guy who was a very successful businessman. He decided that God was calling him to ministry. His name is Jeremiah Lampier. And so he left this, uh, prosperous lifestyle, went into ministry, and was called to go into the city of New York and to be an evangelist there. And here he is in the city of New York. And the Lord lays on his heart. What you need to do is you need to start a prayer meeting from 12 noon to 1:00 in the afternoon and call businessmen to prayer. That sounds like Paul going into some country, doesn't it? Like this is like what? But he. He does this. He makes pamphlets up, he sends them out, he's giving them out to people. And finally the day comes for the first prayer time. He has it up in a room in the city. Um, and so 12:00 comes and he's there. Nobody's there. 1215. Nobody's there. 12, 25. Nobody's there. But he continues to pray. 1236 people walk in. He has six people that day. He says they all agree they need to continue to do this. They do it the next week, 20 people, the next week, 40 people. By the time a month came, there were over 3000 people praying they had to open up other churches. By the time this was done, there was over 100,000 conversions in New York City. One of the guys was from Philadelphia. He went down to Philadelphia and started it. Eventually there were so many people. There was 150,000 people in prayer. They had tents up to pray, and God was at work in powerful ways. Police stations reporting they had no crime to report. This is in our area folks. This is what the power of prayer is able to do. As people begin to pray, we all know about the Billy Graham Crusades after the war, but how many of us know about the the Jesus movement in the 70s? You know, there was that movie Calvary Chapel. I'm I'm a product of that. My father in law, Doctor Miller, was right in the middle of that. Right. New life, church network, sonship, all that stuff that came out of the Jesus movement and God was at work. And guess what? It was a time just like this, 1968 and 69. We thought that democracy was done. There was so much upheaval and political upheaval and so much going on. But what did God do is people began to pray out of desperation. He brought revival. He brought renewal. I stand here and say thank you for your prayers. You who cried out. So that brings us to us right now, right. Don't you want to see our culture changed? Don't you want to see our children have a zeal for the Lord? Oh, God. Lord help us. Do we want to see a new movement of the Holy Spirit? Here's what it says in Second Chronicles 714. If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face, turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land. It starts with God's people humbling themselves. See, our country has fallen into temptation of basing our hopes on technology, politics and affluence, and the appearance of peace. But now, as our technology ensnares and isolates us, our politics threaten to tear us apart. Our prosperity has led us to a moral and cultural decline. God's words in Ezekiel speak to us today. Listen to these words. I look for someone among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land, so I would not have to destroy it. But I found no one. Brothers and sisters, the call is for us to stand in the gap, to stand in the gap and pray. We need to pick up the mantle of the priesthood of believers and begin to cry out in prayer. And here's one of the things that I think is so important for us to understand. As we pray, we demolish strongholds.

Listen. Listen to second Corinthians ten verses three through five. For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets us up against the knowledge of God. We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. Hallelujah! We have the weapon prayer unleashes what the Holy Spirit can only do. Addiction, people being delivered from addiction, abusive situations, destructive and terrible relationships, broken relationships. What are some of the strongholds of our culture? Power and violence, deception and godlessness. Sexual immorality? Disregard for life. Anything. You make as an idol in your life is a stronghold. Fear, guilt, resentment, insecurity. All of these can be strongholds in your mind. And the Bible says that we are to tear them down and we do that as we pray. So Steve shared about the book comeback. Barbara. Well, of course I lived that life. I was, uh, going out with Barbara then before we were married. And here's one of the things that her parents decided to do. And it's in the book. They decided that they had to pray specifically about the strongholds in her life, and they began asking the Holy Spirit to show them where the strongholds were. And then they began praying faithfully against those strongholds. And lo and behold, who came to the Lord? Barbara came to the Lord. I never thought that was going to happen. I saw such change in her. It impacted my life. That got me to begin reading the Bible. And then I came to the Lord and nobody expected that. But this is what God does as we pray. My brother is in a heroin addiction for 30 years, in and out of prison, destroying relationships. But we continue to pray and we pray down the strongholds. Today he is a Christian and he's taking care of my 92 year old mother, my daughter, my my sister who has mental issues and was taking care of my father until he passed a couple years ago, and God is using him in powerful ways. This is the power of prayer and praying down strongholds. We work in the inner city, a high rise down at 11th and Dakota. There's a woman there. Her name was Miss Dawkins. She's now with the Lord. What she did was gather people up in this neighborhood where there was so much upheaval and violence, and she would gather them up and do prayer walks around the city, around that area. And God used it in such powerful ways. Crime went down. Drug dealers were coming to her and asking her for things. It was incredible and we were a part of that. Brothers and sisters. We have the power. It's our turn to stand in the gap.

Listen to this from Andrew Murray. There's a world with its needs entirely dependent upon and waiting to be helped by intercession. There is a God in heaven with his all sufficient supply for all those needs. Waiting to be asked. There is a church with its wondrous calling and its sure promises, waiting to be roused to a sense of its wondrous responsibility and power. There is a world with its perishing millions with intercession, its only hope. And guess what? Every one of us can be a part of that. There's not a one of us here who can't pray. Prayer is love at war. Prayer is love at war. We want to see dry bones raise to life. We want to see hearts of stone turned into hearts of flesh, do we not? The question before us today is are we ready Because of Pentecost. Are we ready now to stand in the gap? How about in your small groups? Maybe you have a prayer group. Men and women's groups. Youth ministry. Young adult ministry. Are you praying? Are you praying for this pouring out? Are you praying for revival and renewal? I want to encourage you to do that. But more than that, by God's grace, as I've been preaching at different places, I've been asking, Is God raising up some people in this congregation who want to join together in corporate prayer for revival, renewal, and awakening? And if you do, guess what? I'm going to encourage you to sign up. I have one here and one there. Sign up your name. Your email address. I've been doing a zoom revival prayer meeting, but one of the things I really like to see happen is for some of our Liberty churches become hubs where we pray for renewal, revival, and awakening. I would love for Liberty to be this church here, to be one of those hubs where we would come together and we would pray for these things. If God is touching your heart afterward, hey, come and sign this. If you can't, you can't remember to do that. angelo@liberti.org You can let me know that you want to be a part of that. We'd love to have you join us. Let's join together. Let's be a part of the kingdom moving forward. The feast of Pentecost has not ended. It continues to this day. That's why you and I are here. Amen. A men, let me just pray us out. As I'm doing that, I'm going to ask those who are on teams to come forward, teams that are going to be commissioned today. Elders, please come forward as I pray us out this morning.

Let's pray. Father in heaven, we so thank you this morning for Pentecost. We thank you that the spirit is now with us. We thank you, Holy Spirit, that you are alive. We thank you that we're here because through your irresistible grace, you opened up our hearts and gave us poverty, a spirit that we would repent and know that the blood of Christ covers our sin, has purchased us from the pit, has made us sons and daughters, and now we can be your witnesses, empowered by the same spirit that's within us. Come, Holy Spirit, we pray. Give us an urgency to cry out together that you will come in this day with revival, awakening and renewal, that we will see hearts of stone turn into hearts of flesh. We will see dry bones being raised up in our families, in our neighborhoods, in our workplaces, and in our schools, in our country and around the globe. These are the things that we cry out for. Come, Holy Spirit, we pray, and we pray this in Jesus name, Amen.