Pastor Sherry’s message for June 8, 2025

Scriptures: Acts 2:1-21; Ps 104:24-35; Ro 8:14-17; Jn 14:9-14

Last week, I preached about the power of prayer.  I drew from our Acts 16 lesson in which Paul and Silas were praising God and praying at midnight from a Philippian jail. In response to their praise/singing and prayer, God sent His supernatural power (the Holy Spirit) to effect a jail break. This Holy Spirit empowered jail-break resulted in (1) an unknown number of fellow prisoners coming to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ; 

(2) the conversion and baptism of the jailer and his household; and (3) the release of Paul and Silas, after they had been cleaned up, doctored up from their beatings, and fed by the jailor.

Now I hope you agree that this was a pretty impressive lesson on the power of prayer. Our God hears our prayers and responds to them. Though He may not always answer in the way we want (He may say “NO” to what we are asking of Him. He also may not act as quickly as we might like. Sometimes He answers us immediately—I’ve witnessed people being healed in a prayer service immediately, and I myself have been healed a time or two. Sometimes His response comes after a few days—we prayed for rain last week, and voila! That answer was pretty speedy. It has rained almost daily, praise God!  And sometimes we have to be committed to praying for weeks, months, or even years. The point is to not get discouraged and lose faith. The point is to continue to pray, or as the Bible says, pray without ceasing.

Today we celebrate Pentecost, the birth of the Christian Church (of all denominations) and the impartation of the Holy Spirit to each of us who are “in Christ.”

A.  Our Acts 2:1-21 lesson tells us that the Church was birthed through prayer.  120 disciples of Jesus–men and women–were gathered in the Temple, doing what Jesus had told them to do:  He had instructed them, in Acts 1:4 to stay in Jerusalem and to… wait for the gift my Father promised…in a few days, you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.  So they are obediently waiting and praying.

After 10 days of waiting and praying, the Holy Spirit shows up!

It’s a theophany! A God-sighting! They hear the sound of a big, strong wind, like a tornado; they see the sight of flames over 120 heads. And suddenly they are empowered!

They are empowered to praise Jesus in languages they had never learned and to speak to strangers about the Lord.

What can we conclude from this passage about what the he Holy Spirit can do in our lives?  (1) He empowers us to do things we cannot do in our own strength. Some years ago, I shared the true story of how an Air Force Academy cadet, a woman, lifted a car off of her father.  No young woman is that strong, without the assistance of the Holy Spirit. 

One of my favorite stories of a special empowerment is that of Benaiah from 2 Samuel 23:20-21— Benaiah son of Jehoida was a valiant fighter from Kabzeel, who performed great exploits. He struck down two of Moab’s best men [They may have been giants]. He also went down into a pit on a snowy day and killed a lion. And he struck down a huge Egyptian. Although the Egyptian had a spear in is hand, Benaiah went against him with a club. He snatched the spear from the Egyptian’s hand and killed him with his own spear. Benaiah, a mighty Hebrew warrior, chases a lion into a pit on a snowy day and kills it.  Why would any sane person choose to do such a thing?  The lion probably weighed 500 pounds and his paws, claws, and teeth were better suited to combat in a slippery environment than a man with no gun (just a spear or club). Nevertheless, Benaiah slays the lion. Subsequently, this feat becomes the most salient feature of his impressive resume: He was later hired by King David, to lead his body guard. Then he rose to become the commander of the King’s armies. The Lord gifted him with his fighting skills with his personal future and that of Israel in mind.

The Holy Spirit empowers us and also (2) inspires us—as with Peter—to preach a powerful sermon, or to say just the right thing (a rhema or healing word) to a person who needs to hear it.  Year ago, I was counseling a mother who had lost her adult son to suicide. She felt so guilty for having missed the signs of his deep despair and for not having done more to prevent his death. I said to her, “When might you be able to forgive yourself for not knowing what you did not know and for not doing what you did not know to do?”  The Holy Spirit gave me that inspiration for her. It was the key to unlock her incredible sense of failure and guilt.

He (3) equips us as well, as with speaking languages we never studied or tried to learn. (I wish He had done so for me when I studied Greek in seminary!) Thousands of worshippers gathered from all the known world heard their own language spoken with no discernable accent that day.

Many in the crowd knew the disciples were working-class folk from Galilee. They spoke Aramaic, a mix of Hebrew and Canaanite dialects; and they spoke Koine Greek—a kind of Hebrew influenced Greek. They may have known Latin, the language of the Romans. But how could they suddenly know so many different, foreign tongues?

B.  Our psalmist (Psalm 104:24-35) reminds us that the Holy Spirit is the creative arm of the Trinity. We worship one God in three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God the Father is the Head, the leader—He has the ideas, the plans.  The Son takes His orders from the Father and, has appeared to us in flesh to demonstrate the Father’s great love for us, and to save us. God the Holy Spirit is the power source, the energy.

So this psalm celebrates God’s creative ingenuity.  He came up with so many different kinds of creatures; (I read Friday that there are 43 species of Toucan birds in Costa Rica.)  Through the Holy Spirit, God the Fathe…

 (4) gave us/them life (in Hebrew, the Holy Spirit is called the Ruach—literally. a current of air, figuratively, the breath). The psalmist writes in verse 30—When You send Your breath [the Ruach], they are created and You renew the face of the earth. The Holy Spirit also (5) sustains us as we live.

C.  In the Romans 8:14-17 passage, Paul wants us to realize it is through the Holy Spirit that we, who have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, are (6) adopted as God’s children.  We don’t have to be afraid of God.  Rather, we can approach Him as we would a grace-filled and loving father-figure.

D. And Jesus Himself, makes the astonishing claim in our Gospel lesson (John13:9-14) that the Holy Spirit will assist us to do (7) even greater works than Jesus did as He walked the earth.  The  Holy Spirit will heal people through our prayers. The Holy Spirit will assist us to cast out demons from people. The Holy Spirit will move through us to bring those who are lost to salvation.  How is it possible that we will do more than Jesus did?  Well, for one thing, there are more of us.  And, or another,  we have access to social media as a way to reach people.

We (8) abide with the Lord through the power of the Holy Spirit.  Years ago I read two books by Frank Peretti: This Present Darkness and Piercing the Darkness (I recommend them to you).  In both, he asserted that when groups of Christ-followers prayed, angels massed in the unseen world to do battle against the forces of evil on our behalf.  This notion was new to me then, but it made sense.  God enlists His angel armies to execute His will and respond to our prayers.  Remember the prophet Daniel was told by the Angel Gabriel that God had heard his prayers but that Gabriel had had to fight a powerful demon for 21 days in order to deliver the answer.  Paul was not exaggerating when he said (Ephesians 6:12, NLT)—For we are not fighting against flesh and blood enemies, but against the evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil-spirits in the heavenly places.  No wonder our Lord wants us to pray without ceasing! 

Our prayers ignite the hosts of heaven and our prayer invites the assistance of the Holy Spirit.  Consider this story whose source I have forgotten:

 (Please know, in advance, that I mean no disrespect to either Baptists or Pentecostals).   A Baptist preacher and his wife decided they wanted a dog. Given the scrutiny/oversight from their congregation, they knew it needed to be a well-behaved Baptist dog.  So they went to an exclusive kennel and expressed their needs and reservations to the owner.  He assured them he had just the right dog for them. When the dog was produced, the kennel owner began giving it commands:  Fetch the Bible.  The dog bounced over to the bookshelves, looked them over, located the Bible, and obediently brought it to the man.  Then he said, Find the 23rd Psalm.  The dog, demonstrating amazing dexterity with his paws, leafed thru the Bible, found the correct passage, and pointed to it with his nose.

The preacher and his wife were so impressed that they immediately purchased the dog.  Later, they began to show off to members of their congregation what the dog could do, having him locate several Bible verses.  Folks were amazed, but one skeptic asked, Can he do any normal dog tricks?  “Let’s see,” said the preacher and commanded him to “heel!”  The dog immediately jumped up on a chair, laid his paw on a parishioner’s head and began to howl!  The preacher was shocked and turned to his wife and complained, “Honey, we’ve been swindled!  The kennel owner sold us a Pentecostal dog!”

This Pentecostal dog had the Holy Spirit gift of healing! If the Holy Spirit decides to work through you to heal someone, for heaven’s sake, don’t be alarmed!  Instead thank the Lord for the wonderful gift He has given you!  And use it to build up God’s Kingdom here on earth.

©️2025 Rev. Dr. Sherry Adams