Pastor Ralph Douglas West - Pentecost | Acts 2:1-4

0:24 How do you receive things? Do you extend your hand out? If it is, just extend your hand out. Open them to receive. Now bow your heads in prayer that we may receive from God this morning. O God our Father We thank you for your creating power. that you have made all things and made them well,

1:29 that you have given us all things richly to enjoy for the beauty and the bounty of this fair earth and for the creating power which can make all things new. We thank you, O Father. Forgive us if in pride and selfishness and in anger we have misused your gifts and have used them for death, that which was meant for life. O Lord Jesus Christ, we thank you for your redeeming power that you love us and gave yourself for us. that you gave your life a ransom for many, a ransom for us, that you were obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

2:26 We thank you, O Christ. Forgive us if we have treated your love lightly as a little thing and if we have never, ever begun to love you as you have first loved us. O Holy Spirit of God we thank you for your keeping power for the guidance you have given us for the knowledge you have brought us for your continual upholding strengthening, protecting power we thank you O Spirit of God forgive us if we have tried to live life alone and have despoiled ourselves of the divine help we might have had from you. And may the blessings of God the Father the Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, the three in one, the one in three, be in us and stay with each of us always.

3:35 And God's people say, Amen. Give God praise today. Wow. Thank you. Choir, instrumental. vocal, individual, corporal. for what God has already done for us today.

4:01 Pentecost, Acts chapter 2, verses 1 through 13, Pentecost. Beginning at verse 1 in chapter 2 and concluding at verse 4 for the reading, I'm going to tag this text, Pentecost. When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly, a sound like a blowing of violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.

4:43 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire separated and came to rest on each other. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit And began to speak in other tongues As the Spirit enabled them This is the word of God Amen You may be seated The spirit came On Pentecost In personal power Unusual Unrepeatable Unstrained power In wind and fire And the word of God says On the day of Pentecost something happened.

5:38 Both my aunties were the secretaries at Lounge Unity Missionary Baptist Church, Barbara Davis and Jewel Harrison. and they prepared the church program for Sunday, a thick program, and then we had a church clerk, Sister Tolliver, and she would read the whole program. Something happened on Sundays when she would read these programs. I later learned that this was a tradition that was not limited to Houston.

6:39 When I was a college student, I was a member of Mount Tabor Missionary Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas. And they too had a church clerk. And Mrs. Page was the church secretary for Pastor Floyd D. Harris. and in the bulletin there was an asterisk after the opening and the songs and the scriptures and the welcome and the announcement and the pastoral observations and the song and the sermon and offering and the benediction.

7:33 The program had been set. We were to follow this program. And at the bottom was an asterisk. Subject to change under the Holy Spirit's direction. Pentecost is 50 days after resurrection but the historian Luke says Pentecost this day of festivity, a day of remembering life and the God that gives life is a day where things happen And it's not always in the church bulletin.

8:17 It's an asterisk there. Stuff happened at church. I'm going to enjoy myself preaching today whether you follow what I'm saying or not in my head I am having a hallelujah time thinking about growing up in church As I can hear my children saying, Daddy, tell us some of the stories of growing up in church. And my favorite is the asterisk.

8:55 Because things seem to change every Sunday, something would happen. I like church like that. I like when it gets twisted and turned upside down, where people come to the microphone at the wrong time, starting in the wrong place, because in the bulletin, there's an asterisk that says, subject to change under the Holy Spirit's direction. It happened that day on Pentecost when the people had gathered in a room and they had come for one thing and something else happened because they learned that where you meet God is usually where you will meet God.

9:51 They had met God in this same room 50 days earlier. 50 days later, they're just gathering to celebrate a festival. 50 days earlier after the resurrection of Jesus the disciples gathered one of the disciples was missing one had betrayed and gone AWOL the disbelieving disciple needed belief and Jesus just showed up an asterisk changed the whole setting he wasn't supposed to be there he had been killed they didn't believe it he was up for those who haven't read the Bible and not familiar with this part it's found in John chapter 20 and the disciples were upstairs in what is called the upper room and Jesus showed up suddenly, uninvited.

10:59 Since it's his house, he can show up when he gets ready to, just showed up. and breathed on the disciples and said, peace I give to you. A peace that surpasses human understanding.

11:21 A peace in the midst of confusion. For they thought that their hope had been taken away from them and suddenly something happened. 50 days later, 120 of them in a room where they had met Jesus before because where you've met Jesus is where you're more likely to meet Jesus. I can tell you the same members, eight o'clock had the same response. I'll say it again.

12:03 You ought to have a place where you meet with Jesus. Oh, I know what you're saying. I know who I'm preaching to. Well, I'm an intellectual, and I believe in the ubiquity of God, and God cannot be restricted. I understand that. I know that language, too. And still with that, there ought to be some specific place Lovers have their place Me and Mrs. Jones. We got a thing going on. We meet at the same place, same time, same cafe. If lovers can have a place, then those who claim that they love God ought to have a place. So where we met God is where we are more likely to meet Him in an upper room suddenly.

13:14 Well Jesus had breathed on these people Now a wind is blowing And wind throughout the Bible is symbolic of God doing some things Primarily God's power So you pick up manifestations of God Audible manifestations visible manifestations, verbal manifestations all happened in that upper room in a church service that had been printed in the bulletin to follow one way and right when they were getting ready to welcome the visitors a wind started blowing.

14:10 not just a wind blowing a violent wind that disturbed everything in the room wind blowing violent wind yeah and they heard it A couple of weeks ago, Harold Kennard, Dan Williams, Raphael and I, we were sitting out and there was a clap of thunder. That's what it was, you know, a thunderclap. And that thunder never stopped. It started rolling.

14:51 For a minute, it clapped right over our head and then it just started traveling. east. I don't know if it ever got where it was going. It was loud. I'd heard thunder before, but that day it was sudden and it didn't stop. It didn't pay attention to the meteorological bulletin that said, no rain today. But suddenly it just showed up and just started rolling. and rolling, suddenly a violent wind. broke out in that room and it was against the bulletin that had been printed that day. When?

15:43 You read it in the Bible before how when shows up? In 2 Samuel 5, 24, David's going to battle against the Philistines and here's what God says to him. Look at the trees and when you see the rustling in the tree limbs, that is my presence and I have gone before you.

16:07 In one of the victory songs in 2 Samuel again, when you read about it in chapter 22, it describes God as his breath bursting out of his nostrils. The wind, ruach, God's presence. 1 Kings 19, Elijah is looking and the wind breaks the mountain, shadows out the rocks, the wind. And what about that beautiful scene in Ezekiel when he's standing up looking at a dead church full of bones. And God says, speak to it. And nothing happened. He said, keep on talking, but this time involve the wind. bring my presence, get my power, bring my spirit. And wherever the spirit is, there is life.

17:05 Let me tell you something. I don't care how much you love Jesus. You can tell me how much you love God. If I'm doing this much preaching and there ain't no excitement here, it's because you ain't got no breath, no spirit. Nicodemus talked to Jesus at night and he said the wind blows where it will.

17:32 You don't know the sound thereof. You don't know where it comes from. Suddenly, I like church like that where stuff just break out at the right time. I've seen it right here in our church multiple, multiple times. You waiting on the spirit to show up at one time, he shows up at the invocation, at the very beginning of the worship. That's why you ought to get to church on time. You don't know what God's going to do. I watched him show up at the end of worship. The wind. But there's not just an audible manifestation. There's also the visual manifestation. In that upper room, a pillar, pillar.

18:21 A fire. You see it. Imagine one of those columns when you walk out, burning red. Tongues, tongues. Shaped like tongues. just peeling off, sitting on your head. Yeah, that's what it was. but worship him whatever you do do that please worship him don't be more excited at the 0.0 victory of the Celtics over Miami than you are of how God has stepped into your situation and delivered you in the last second of life priest Pastor West nobody enjoys sporting events as much as me I love being there even if I don't know who's playing.

19:46 I don't even have to like the team. If I'm looking at it, I just pick somebody and I start cheering, cheering. That game's over with. Nobody cares about it. But when you think about the game that was played on Calvary and what God has done to redeem you, you ought to shout about it sometimes.

20:07 Look at it. See it sometimes. They heard and they saw these tongues. But one last thing here, there was a verbal manifestation. There was some talking going on. And the talking that took place was a miracle because under the heavens in that meeting outside now, every nation under the sun they said was there and people started talking and when they started talking people understood what they were saying talking and understanding.

21:06 You ever been in that situation? I have. Maybe in some other country where you're trying to talk to somebody. They don't understand you. You don't understand them. And then you start trying to imitate that dialect as if that's going to make them understand what you're saying. They heard They saw and then they started talking So what do we speak then?

21:39 These tongues that God gives to us We communicate the message of Jesus Christ That's what you better be saying What has God said? Repeat what God has said Thank you. And that's what happened that day Something unique and abiding In that room chapter 1 Outside chapter 2 The worship service Had been turned upside down Asterisk God can show up And if you let God show up He will change the agenda He always does.

22:26 Now I'm through. Let me tell you one last thing. This whole experience that takes place that day, 50 days after the resurrection, is so that we could be filled, listen to me now, with God's presence himself. There are signs of you being filled. And usually it betrays you and your speech. Here it is. This is how you know when people are not filled.

23:10 Church is boring. And it is. If you're not filled. by the way I'm not talking about non-believers I'm talking about Christians now so let me say it one more time I don't get nothing out of church I don't see why he got to get all loud and everything he's supposed to have gone to school he probably one of them bootleggers who ain't never been nowhere they just call them names you're not filled. So everything's an insult to you.

24:04 God is calling you today to live a life under his lordship. See, I don't want, I want to live my life. And I thought being a Christian man, I call on God when I need him.

24:24 Because you're not filled. You're empty. do they have to sing so long empty Don't rush out of church You know, greet one another I don't want to know them I don't want them to know me Empty Pentecost is a day for us to remember that God has filled us with his presence, that he has come into us, he has lived in us. to be filled.

25:22 And feeling can be enlarged. We have what these people didn't have. We have a whole Bible. They didn't have it. We have radio and television and technology and we can go out and purchase music today for our own edification. They didn't have that.

25:47 So what did they have that we don't have? We have more and they had less. To be filled. This is one of the debts that we owe to Pentecostalism over the last years. To remind us to return worship where it really belongs. That there is something subjective about our worship that we can encounter God. some of you who grew up in particular traditions you get nervous just hearing the word Pentecostal charismatic charismatic the gifts of God's spirit but you have to be careful because the Holy Spirit's empowering is not just for your personal feel good Yeah, this way it gets a little bumpy right here.

26:46 Because if all I have to do is worship God the way I want to worship God and I feel God, then that's good. But that's not Acts. in the book of Acts and remember Luke is a historian he is so situated these chapters in a particular way that after the empowering of the Holy Spirit and the birthing of the church the Holy Spirit does not just fill us with his presence but transforms us to change the world that we live in that's the power of worship Worship is not just raising your hand. It's after I raise them, I go out in the world and I put them to work to make it look like the world that I have just left called the church. Preach, Pastor West.

27:42 So you think I'm making this up? To be Holy Spirit-filled is to be a changer in the world. And not changing it to your petty, puny politics. It breaks down social barriers. And the purpose and the meaning of the destruction of social barriers barriers is that we engage one another in meaningful conversation and we find a life and dignity of all people. And if church ain't doing that, you ain't been to church. if church is merely how you feel then I understand then where much of our problem is we can have high worship on Sunday and have unethical business practices on Monday you cannot give your heart to God