Pentecost Praise (Talk)

I had a funny experience the other day. I was speaking to a group of people about Jesus and telling them about a worship service I had been at that overran by 4.5 hours as the students at the Bible college were overwhelmed by a move of Jesus and couldn’t stop praising Jesus and repenting to Jesus until one of them decided it was time they went out on the streets and shared Jesus with the people there.

After I had talked the leader said he wanted us to praise Jesus as well. We started to worship Jesus and as I knelt down by the altar table I felt Jesus walking by me, glimpsing Jesus’ sandals and the hem of Jesus’ robes as I knelt facedown on the floor.

It reminded me of a story of Jesus I heard the year before in Africa. A Sudanese priest testified that he had converted to following Jesus from Islam, and his parents had reacted against him believing Jesus. They’d dug a grave for him, and buried an empty casket to say that he was dead to him. He’d visited the grave and was staring in, when he felt a person behind him. He realised this person was Jesus when the man said: “Why are you looking in the grave. You are not there, and I am not in my grave either. Follow me.” He’d encountered the Lord Jesus Christ in Africa.

That reminded me of a man called Saul who persecuted Jesus’s disciples in the Middle-East. He was heading on a road to Syria to capture and imprison followers of Jesus, when a light blinded him and a Jesus’ voice reached him from heaven changing his life forevermore.

Jesus has been revolutionising lives since the beginning of time.

A few years ago an Iranian woman called Ellie came into our church wanting to know how to become a Christian. The woman she spoke to didn’t know, so sent for me to talk to her. I came down and told her a story Jesus told about a man who had two sons, one of whom wanted him dead so he could get his inheritance early. Amazingly the father took out a mortgage and let the boy have his money. The boy wasted the money super fast, and was down and out and destitute until Jesus said he ‘came to his senses’ and came home. While he was still a long way off Jesus said the boy’s father came running to him, gave him a robe, a ring and a banquet feast, explaining the ‘this son of mine who was dead is alive again, he was lost and he is found.’

Ellie was transfixed by this Jesus story and came to Alpha course that night, and was baptised a few months later as Jesus worked in her life. She had an encounter with Jesus a bit like the students at my college. Not a vision like Saul or a hand on the shoulder like my Sudanese friend, but an experience in her heart of the Spirit of Jesus… the Spirit of God… the Holy Spirit. Jesus’ story of that wayward boy still had the power to change her today.

All sorts of people get changed by Jesus when he walked around the earth.

I think of a young business man called Simon Peter who let Jesus borrow his boat one day to teach from and found Jesus had the power to fill his boat and his friend’s boat with enough fish to almost sink both of them. He was so shocked he fell at Jesus’ feet and said to Jesus, ‘go away Lord I am a sinful man’, but Jesus made him his chief follower.

I think of Zacheus a self-made man whose success and ambition had removed him from community and family and left him isolated until Jesus spotted him up a tree and went for a meal at his house, causing Zacheus to turn his life around, and repent of all he had done wrong to Jesus.

I think of a woman who knew that if she could just touch Jesus’ robe she would be healed and I think of a twelve year old girl who heard Jesus speaking to her minutes after she had died and order her to get up again, who was raised back to life.

I think of Simon, an African immigrant who carried Jesus’ cross up a hill when Jesus’ bruised and battered body couldn’t get up that hill to Golgotha anymore. Who got to hear Jesus tell a thief on the cross he could be with Jesus in paradise that day and to hear Jesus pray for forgiveness for his enemies. He got to see Jesus give up his spirit and he got to hear a Roman hardcore soldier declare that surely Jesus was a son of God when he saw how he died and the earthquake that accompanied Jesus’ dying breath, and the dark cloud that settled over the earth for the three hours Jesus hung and suffered for your sins and for mine.

I think of Cleopas and his wife, meeting Jesus on a road journey after Jesus came back to life, and the 500 who Jesus appeared to at one time, as well as the band of disciples who got to eat with Jesus, meet with Jesus and touch Jesus’ wounds over a 40 day period. Disciples who worshipped Jesus as they saw Jesus ascend into heaven, as angels told them Jesus would come back again in the same way one day.

I think of that same Simon Peter on this day: Pentecost - filled with the Holy Spirit warning and pleading with a crowd of 3000+ people to ‘save yourselves from this corrupt generation’. Pleading with them to ‘repent and be baptised everyone of you in the name of Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins, and promising them that they too would receive the gift of the Holy Spirit from Jesus.’

Simon Peter boldly told them that God has raised Jesus from the dead even though they had crucified him - proving that Jesus was both Lord and Christ.

Christ meant he was the greatest all religious leaders… the anointed one.

Lord meant he was the greatest of all political leaders - the King of all Kings, replacing all political leaders as Lord, including dangerously the all powerful Emperor of the day Caesar Augustus - who was worshipped as a god by the subjects of the Roman Empire.

Simon Peter proclaimed that Jesus was and is and is to come Lord and Christ…

He pleaded with and urged the crowd to repent to Jesus and be saved by the Lord Jesus Christ.

A few years ago Ellie came to know that same Jesus as Lord and Christ and received the Holy Spirit - who is the Lord Jesus Christ himself living inside her.

29 years ago I came to know that Jesus as Lord and Christ and received the Holy Spirit, Jesus living inside me.

Many people standing here know this Jesus as Lord and Christ, and know he lives in them and they live in him.

They have repented, fled the coming trouble Peter warned about and believed in Jesus.

How about you?

Why not make a decision to have an encounter with God in Jesus…. He rose again from a cross that he hung on for your sake, and he still transforms lives today as he did for all those people in the book… tonight why not get yourself written into his book of life… and if you’re up for it pray this prayer with me…

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“Lord Jesus Christ, I am sorry for the things I have done wrong in my life (take a few moments to ask his forgiveness for anything particular that is on your conscience).  Please forgive me. I now turn from everything that I know is wrong.

Thank you that you died on the cross for me, so that I could be forgiven and set free. Thank you that you offer me forgiveness and the gift of your Spirit.

I now receive that gift. Please come into my life by your Holy Spirit to be with me forever.  Thank you Lord Jesus, Amen.”