TOPIC:‌“Pentecost - A Revolutionary Day”

                 by Rev. Dr. Reg Dunlap

 

TEXT:‌Acts 2:1-4

 

“And when the day of Pentecost was fully come...they were all filled with the Holy Spirit” (2:1, 4)

 

‌Pentecost is the day we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit to indwell and fill the lives of those early disciples of Christ. It took place fifty days after the resurrection of Christ and marked the birth of the Christian Church. Whereas Christmas gave the Church its Savior and Easter gave the Church its message, Pentecost gave the Church its power. The power of the risen Christ has now been released within the lives of all believers.

 

‌No wonder G. Campbell Morgan, the great Bible expositor of past years, wrote: “The coming of the Holy Spirit was the dawn of the brightest day the world had seen since the Fall.” But even though this is true, there are still thousands of Christians who have experienced only a small measure of the Spirit's power in their lives. This is what Vance Havner, well-known American preacher, had in mind when he wrote: “The Church is hiding behind tons of brick with a pre-Pentecostal experience. Pentecost is on the church calendar, but it is not the Church's condition.”

 

‌How sad that such a situation exists! Exciting as that first Pentecost was to those early group of disciples, if it means very little to you and me today, then we have missed out on one of God's greatest blessings, and the poor church with all of its problems is desperately in need of this same experience. God wants to emerge us in the full stream of the Holy Spirit that will result in our living victorious lives during these stressful times. The question remains: Will we allow that to happen to us? Will we appropriate the Holy Spirit's power?

 

I.

 

‌Consider, to begin with, the DIVINE MESSAGE that is COMMUNICATED regarding the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Notice the words found in verses 1 and 4: “And when the day of Pentecost was fully come...They were all filled with the Holy Spirit.”

 

‌So the message that God wanted to communicate at Pentecost was this: Christ by His Holy Spirit has come to RESIDE and REIGN both within the individual life of the believer and in the corporate life of His Church. The message of Pentecost is that every Christian's life should come under the control and mastery of the Holy Spirit. They should be filled to overflowing with the Spirit of the living God. His Holy Spirit should occupy every part of the believer's being and personality.

 

‌At this point I realize that one of the problems that stand in the way for some Christians . . .