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(Below are the words you will need to sing along with the Drive In Service for May 23rd. 2021 along with the transcript of the sermon)
1. All hail the power of Jesus’ Name!
Let angels prostrate fall;
Bring forth the royal diadem
To crown Him Lord of all.
Crown Him, ye martyrs of your God,
Who from His altar call;
Extol the stem of Jesse’s rod,
And crown Him Lord of all.
Ye seed of Israel’s chosen race,
Ye ransomed from the fall,
Hail Him who saves you by His grace,
And crown Him Lord of all.
Ye Gentile sinners, ne’er forget
The wormwood and the gall;
Go spread your trophies at His feet,
And crown Him Lord of all.
Let every kindred, every tribe,
On this terrestrial ball,
To Him all majesty ascribe,
And crown Him Lord of all.
O that with yonder sacred throng
We at His feet may fall,
Join in the everlasting song,
And crown Him Lord of all!
Interview - Rev Rob Morse (no transcript available)
All people that on earth do dwell,
Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice;
Him serve with fear, His praise forth tell,
Come now before Him and rejoice.
Know that the Lord is God indeed;
Without our aid He did us make;
We are His flock, He doth us feed,
And for His sheep He doth us take.
O enter then His gates with praise,
Approach with joy His courts unto;
Praise Him and bless His Name always,
For it is seemly so to do.
For why? The Lord our God is good;
His mercy is for ever sure;
His truth at all times firmly stood,
And shall from age to age endure.
Prayer & Reading (Acts 2:1-21)
(Click link for reading)
Breathe on us, breath of God;
Fill us with life anew,
That we may love what Thou dost love,
And do what Thou wouldst do.
Breathe on us, breath of God,
Until our hearts are pure,
Until with Thee we will one will,
To do and to endure.
Breathe on us, breath of God,
Till we are wholly Thine,
Until this earthly part of us
Glows with Thy fire divine.
Breathe on us, breath of God,
So shall we never die,
But live with Thee the perfect life
Of Thine eternity.
Sermon
Introduction
What does Pentecost in a pandemic look like … and what
can we learn from that first Pentecost to make the most of being the people of
God travelling through a pandemic?
See, the problem as I see it is that Pentecost has
always seemed like an occasion for bringing people together … and we
haven’t really had a lot of that going on lately.
That first Pentecost, the disciples were all together
in one place and then, when it happened, out they went into the streets to
gather a crowd of people from all the nations all around who heard those
disciples telling out the praises of God each in their own language!
Certainly when I was a lad, Whitsun … which is what we
used to call it in the Valleys anyway … was the time for a new hat for the
ladies, possibly weeks beforehand spent stressing over some fabric bought off
the roll at the co-op and a new dress pattern, with fingers lacerated by pins
and alterations galore until the big day of the Whitsun Parade.
I’m afraid there wasn’t a lot of spiritual
understanding involved at the time.
It was ALL about bringing people together … and this
year, we’re fortunate to be here together, but for so many it will be staying
home to watch the service on YouTube or on ZOOM.
So, after having had a bit of a lull in cases for the
last few months, and with this highly infectious new so-called ‘Indian’ strain
starting to really spread out, is it possible to celebrate Pentecost in the
midst of this pandemic and to know some of that early joy?
Where are the overlaps with that first Pentecost and
ours?
I went back to the Bible to look for some clues and
found five points of correspondence in the Scriptures I’d like to share with
you briefly.
1) Lock down
In preparation for the big thing that was going to
happen, the Lord Jesus told His disciples that when He was gone, they were to
hide away and hunker down for a bit
Now, if all that had happened with the lord’s death
and resurrection then ascension into Heaven had happened around me, I would
have found the confinement He commanded quite frustrating, I think.
I’d have wanted to be doing anything but having to
stay shut up and keep to myself.
We’ve had a fair taste of that experience since about November
last year, I suppose.
Hears what Acts 1 says about it:
“On
one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command:
‘Do
not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised,
which
you have heard me speak about.
5 For John baptised with water,
but in a few days you will be baptised with[b] the Holy Spirit.’”
(Acts 1:4)
Well, you may want to say that’s not exactly a public
service announcement to ‘shelter-in-place’, but Jesus was telling His disciples
to stay where they were.
I must admit I find ‘Wait’ is one of the Lord’s
hardest commands to obey … and I’ve heard it a lot in the last six months or
so.
But the Lord said to wait, because He would send the
Spirit to them, and then empower them and lead them forward as never before.
Don’t go out but wait because John baptised with water
but you will be baptised with the Holy Spirit in a bit.
That ‘because’ is not a reason to wait … did you
notice that?
How frustrating!
That’s what you’ve got to wait FOR … but it’s not the
reason you’ve got to wait.
You’ve got to wait because GOD says you’ve got to wait
and the REASON as such for the waiting is not for you to muse over.
Oh man!
Lockdown has been a bit like that!
Lord WHY are you stopping us from getting out there
and doing what we know you want us to do?!
Just wait.
Until the last few weeks I hadn’t been able to go into
a livestock market since last November … can you imagine?!
Wait.
It’s a good reminder to us in our pandemic Pentecost that God
meets us where we are and can turn tough stuff into great stuff in a moment,
just like that … because when the Spirit was given on that first Day of
Pentecost and Peter preached to the crowds flocking Jerusalem for the big
festival:
“Those who accepted his
message were baptised,
and about three thousand were added
to their number that day.”
Acts 2:41
2) Prior preparation
The old saying (sometimes referred to as ‘All the
P’s’) is that ‘Planning and preparation prevents poor performance’, isn’t it?
The Lord was well aware that His followers were going
to have to go through the experience of His betrayal, trial, crucifixion,
resurrection and ascension … leaving them feeling pretty wrung out and then
alone through the whole experience.
But they’d been prepared for this, even though it
didn’t feel like it, by the prior promise of God …
In John 14:26 Jesus (whilst preparing the disciples
for what was coming) told them in advance:
“All
this I have spoken while still with you. 26 But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit,
whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind
you of everything I have said to you. 27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I
give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be
troubled and do not be afraid.”
The promise of the sending of the Holy Spirit to
empower and provide for the disciples of Christ during His absence was there
even before Pentecost.
Jesus had been preparing His disciples all along as we
just saw but in fact He is not just preparing us but also preparing FOR us in
the perplexing situations and circumstances we face.
3) God’s preparation is diverse, inclusive and personalised
This is the big deal about what happens on
that first day of Pentecost, and about the text Peter picked for the impromptu
sermon he preached on the day from Joel 2:
When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in
bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. (Acts 2:6)
Yes, there was that mighty rush of wind and the
tongues of fire that seemed to alight on the disciples.
But then, filled with the Holy Spirit, they began
to speak in other tongues.
Yes, that’s a miracle, but more astoundingly, and this
seems to be the point that Luke (who wriote Acts) ids trying to get across to
us is that the disciples, these mere “Galileans,” were heard and
understood by all those foreigners gathered in Jerusalem.
They really heard and they really understood.
It’s been a real concern for many of us having to
resort to YouTube and podcasts and what-not throughout lockdown that … well, it
feels like you’re shouting into the dark.
You don’t know who is or who isn’t hearing the sermons
and podcasts and Daily Devotions you’re launching onto the internet for them
and without the feedback you used to get after church you certainly have had no
idea WHAT people are understanding you to be saying … none at all!
But somehow, it seems, that first Pentecost the Lord
proved that He can be trusted to take His Word … the Bible preached in His Name
in reliance on the Spirit of God poured out, even getting uneducated Galileans
to preach it in languages they’ve NEVER learned to people from all over the
known world so that they actually UNDERSTAND it …
So we can trust God to make His Word understood when
our props are stripped away but we preach His Word as faithfully as we know how
in dependence on His Spirit … pandemic lockdown or not.
There’s another parallel between what happened on that
first Pentecost and the pandemic Pentecost we’ve now had two of!
4) This preparation and provision is for ALL His people
All people.
Did you catch that?
“‘And
afterwards,
I will pour out my Spirit on all
people.
Your sons and daughters will
prophesy,
your old men will dream dreams,
your young men will see visions.
29 Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those
days.”
Joel
2:28-29
This promise of the Spirit goes far back to long
before Jesus came to earth.
We read about that in Ezekiel 11:19 ff
“I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in
them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of
flesh. 20 Then they will follow my decrees and be
careful to keep my laws. They will be my people, and I will be their God.”
Or in Ezekiel 36:11 in
the chapter before the Valley of Dry bones passage:
“I will give you a new
heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone
and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my
Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my
laws.”
Or in Ezekiel 39:29 we read
“I will no
longer hide my face from them, for I will pour out my Spirit on
the people of Israel, declares the Sovereign Lord.’”
But Peter on that first Day of Pentecost didn’t
go to any of the passages like that in the major prophets but to this one in
the minor prophet Joel … and the outstanding distinctive extra feature Joel
highlights is that this is for ALL people.
The gifts are there for all of us alike, who
turn from sin, trust Christ and set about a life lived learning from Him EVERY
day to walk in His ways.
NONE of that could be taken from us by COVID.
Personal discipleship – taking personal responsibility
for our own walk with God without the extra help and comfort of public meetings
… that became SO MUCH more important under lockdown, didn’t it?
Cultivating living your life alongside the Lord day by
day in the nitty gritty of it all and enjoying time with the One Who has taken
up residence in every believer’s heart … hearing about that from people’s own
experience during COVID has been one of the joys of it for me, I have to be
honest.
Finally, we go back to the origin of Pentecost for our
final cross over with our one today.
5) Celebrate the Festival
of Harvest with the first fruits of the crops you sow in your field. (Exodus 23:16)
The festival that brought all those pilgrims to
Jerusalem in the first place was not something the authorities at Jerusalem had
just thought up the week before.
The Jewish feast of
Pentecost (Shavuot) was primarily a thanksgiving for the first fruits
of the wheat harvest.
Only later was it associated with a
remembrance of the Law given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai.
But, you see, it was something that went back to Moses.
Think of all that the Jewish people suffered in the
intervening years!
But they still celebrated.
In hard times.
In violent times.
In famine and in drought.
What was it about?
It was an institution, a landmark, a boundary stone in
their national consciousness of an idea that was fulfilled after all those hard
experiences of waiting when the Spirit was poured out in Acts 2 …
And THAT’s when that long established Old Testament
institution was fulfilled … first in Christ, and then in the post-Pentecost
church.
What do I mean?
Firstly that institution and that concept was
fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ.
A) In Christ
Pentecost is an agricultural festival.
Believers presented to the Lord two loaves of bread,
made from fine flour, and baked with leaven, as the first-fruits of the wheat
harvest.
In addition to the grain offering, they offered one
bull, two rams, seven lambs, along with a sin offering of a male goat, and two
male lambs for a peace offering (Lev 23:15-19; Num 28:26-31).
Since the first sheaf of the barley harvest was
presented to YHWH on the day after Passover (Lev 23:11), and the first sheaf of the wheat harvest was offered fifty
days later (23:15), Passover and Pentecost marked the beginning and end of the
grain harvest.
Pentecost was the offering of the first fruits of
the wheat harvest and the occasion when they
offered a sin offering and a peace offering.
Christ was the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of
the world and then the first fruits from amongst the dead as He defeated death
and was raised to life …
“But Christ has indeed been raised
from the dead,
the firstfruits of those
who have fallen asleep.”
1 Corinthians
15:20
And that sin offering made once for
all by Christ on the cross and now vindicated and attested by the outpouring of
the New Covenant blessing of the Spirit became the offering that brought His
people peace with God.
Christ fulfils the role and the
blessing of the Pentecost offerings and celebrates the harvest of the souls of
the earth for the Kingdom of God.
But before you get to dizzy with all of that, there’s
another New covenant angle to the first fruits concept that we really need to
pick up on and wonder at … because this New Covenant first fruits idea that was
embodied in Pentecost gets fulfilled further in what arises with the
post-Pentecost Church.
B) In the life and experience of the Spirit
How does a
believer KNOW that they’re going to go to Heaven when they die?
That’s a fairly
important question, isn’t it?
Of course, it
IS a matter of trusting God to be true to His promise and to honour His Word,
but it’s also about the foretaste or deposit or downpayment on the relationship
with God we’ll have then with the relationship with Him created NOW in the
belierver’s experience by the presence of the Spirit in their heart.
Paul said we
“have the Spirit as the firstfruits” (Rom. 8:23).
The Holy Spirit
is a foretaste, the first installment of our future glory.
He is God’s the
pledge of more to come in our resurrection life.
And for many of us living in
fairly isolated lockdown through this pandemic, that has been a VERY helpful
consequence of Pentecost … and it has led to greater assurance in our faith to
have this happen to us.
C) In the Church
In Romans
16:5 and 1 Corinthians 16:15, the first converts in
those places were called “the firstfruits.”
Some translations use the term “first converts,” but literally it is “first fruits”,
The ἀπαρχή
which was offered to God.
The
first portion of the dough, from which sacred loaves were to be prepared. Hence
term used of persons consecrated to God for all time.
It is the same word as is used in 1 Corinthians 15:20 of
Christ Himself.
James 1:18 uses the term
with reference to believers:
“He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we
might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.”
In this sense too, then, that first Pentecost was the
fulfilment of the Old Testament institution of Pentecost and a reminder that at
all times since and under all circumstances, there’s been fruit for the Lord from the faithful preaching of His
Word by His people by all means … empowered by the Holy Spirit … Who makes it’s
message heard, understood and also fruitful.
Conclusion
What am I trying to say here?
Pentecost under Pandemic conditions is a WEIRD
one.
It’s a confusing one, a perplexing one and a
frustrating one.
But the Old Testament people of God had some
pretty weird Feasts of Pentecost under adverse conditions over many centuries …
not least under bad kings like Ahab or foreign Emperors like Sargon II of
Assyria who led the Northern Kingdom into Exile in 722 BC or Nebuchadnezzar
Emperor of Babylon who carried the southern Kingdom of Judah off to Exile in
586 BC … and yet God still enabled His people and continued working out His
purposes.
You see – here’s just one example - in the
words of Psalm 137
“By the rivers of Babylon we sat and
wept
when we remembered Zion.
2 There on the poplars
we hung our harps,
3 for there our captors asked us for
songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
they said, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’
4 How can we sing the songs of the Lord
while in a foreign land?”
And yet, there it is.
There IS a Psalm 137, and there was the Psalmist, composing a song
of the Lord in that strange land!
And in the puzzling
and frustrating times of our Pandemic Pentecost, the resources we need and the
lessons we need to learn are available to us by means of that first Pentecost
in the life of the Church … by the lessons we learn from the things that
occurred there and by the way the Spirit Who was given at that time now
strengthens, enlightens and equips us for the waiting and the working with what
we’ve got,
·
to sustain the ministry of His Word
·
in dependence on His Spirit
·
to be the first fruits of His Creation in this world.
‘We rest on Thee’, our Shield and our Defender!
We go not forth alone against the foe;
Strong in Thy strength, safe in Thy keeping tender,
‘We rest on Thee, and in Thy Name we go.’
Strong in Thy strength, safe in Thy keeping tender,
‘We rest on Thee, and in Thy Name we go.’
Yes,’ in Thy Name’, O Captain of Salvation!
In Thy dear Name, all other names above;
Jesus our Righteousness, our sure foundation,
Our Prince of glory and our King of love.
Jesus our Righteousness, our sure foundation,
Our Prince of glory and our King of love.
We go in faith, our own great weakness feeling,
And needing more each day Thy grace to know;
Yet from our hearts a song of triumph pealing:
‘We rest on Thee, and in Thy Name we go.’
Yet from our hearts a song of triumph pealing,
‘We rest on Thee, and in Thy Name we go.’
‘We rest on Thee’, our Shield and Our Defender!
Thine is the battle; Thine shall be the praise!
When passing through the gates of pearly splendour,
Victors, we rest with Thee, through endless days.
When passing through the gates of pearly splendour,
Victors, we rest with Thee, through endless days.
Notices
Our next Drive-In Service
will be held on June 6th. in Llandovery Livestock Mart.
It would be EXCELLENT to see
you there.
Stay in
touch with
what is happening at y GRŴP through its Tŷ’r Bugail ministry
·
by
signing up to our email newsletter
·
by
visiting the website www.yGRWP.com or liking our
·
Facebook
page: ‘Grace
Rural Wales Partnership’ where you can also get our Thought for the Day and the
Word for the Week video.
We produce a DIY Sunday
Service Kit each Sunday too … just ask and we’ll happily add you to the
e-mail list for that.
Many
thanks for coming today.
Diolch
yn fawr iawn am ddod.
Contact:
HoWChaplain@gmail.com
07748 644958
@WelshRev on Twitter
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