PENTECOST – The Harmony Found in the Spirit-filled Church

“And when the Day of Pentecost was fully come, (God had a plan) they were all with one accord in one place.”

Since the Holy Spirit is what the scriptures, the creeds, and the hymns say He IS, what does that fact have to do with you and me? The best i. Imagine a seminary illustration, of course is the early church and the disciples. The platform of the Holy Spirit’s work throughout the early church was the harmony of the believers. It all began with the disciples. Jesus prayed for them, for this unity and this harmony in John 17, remember?
The disciples had three years of the best Bible School in the world. Imagine a seminary with Jesus Christ as the entire faculty. They didn’t get a framed degree to hang on a study wall, but they had a degree within them and they loved Christ the Lord. They loved Him when He was alive, they loved Him after He dies, and they loved Him after He rose from the dead.
At this point they had received nothing; they had only been promised something. Up until His death, and even afterward, Jesus created a certain expectation within the disciples. He told them there was a new kind of life for them. It was not to be a poetic life, a psychic life, or even a physical life; rather it was to be marked by an outpouring from above. It was something that would come down upon them out of the world beyond into the deep where the Spirit lived, teaching them, instructing them, making them holy, and giving them power. He told them there was a new and superior kind of life coming; it was to be an infusion, an outpouring of the Spirit. And then, He left them.
Being in one accord is a musical term that means harmony. The early disciples were already one. They were in harmony with each other. They all gathered together in one place. Someone has said that we have yet to see what God can do with us if He can get us all together in one place.
Always remember, God is bigger than anything God can say, because words are inadequate to expre3ss God and what HE can do. Any promise that God ever made, God has to overfill it – the reason being that God is so great, His heart is so kind, His desire so intense that language cannot express it. Neither Greek, English, or any other language can adequately express God and His promises. God promised that they would receive power and that power would come down from heaven upon them. What he did was cross the threshold of their spirits, enter into the deepest depths of their souls, and dwell there forever. He worked within them to purify them, instruct them, teach them, and help them understand that the fulfillment would be greater than the promise, because the fulfillment is God Himself, and the promises are mere words. GOD is always greater than words.
There is a modern error today in the church world. We are led to believe we should elevate the positive and underplay the negative. But everyone who knows how to screw in a light but knows there is a positive to an electric circuit, but you cannot have light burning on the positive alone. It takes both the positive and the negative. Likewise in spiritual life….and we can be glad.
When God sent Jesus to do what He did for us on the Cross, and was raised to life by the power for  the Father conquering death for the believer, we simply come to Him humbly asking for His forgiveness and He transforms us into a new creation. The Old is gone; the new has come. And God’s provision goes beyond setting us free from the guilt of sin, but He (negatively) destroys the sin nature within us that came to us from Adam’s fall, and (positively)  fills our vessel with His Spirit who is holy so we can live like Jesus. Resurrection power comes to us in this Gift Jesus told them to wait on in Jerusalem, and God fulfilled it beyond the disciples wildest dreams because they loved Him with all they were, and empowered by His grace they were committed to be His voice, His hands, His feet, His heart. The result was more lives were transformed through them, by Him. This is how God saved civilization. This is why the Kingdom of God is transforming the world. It is just because ordinary people like you and I are willing to live in harmony with Jesus and be willing to be vessels of honor for God – sanctified wholly….through and through. And I would just remind us, even the covid-19 epidemic will NOT stifle the growth of God’s Kingdom. If the gates of hell can’t stop it, surely covid-19 has no possibility of bringing much hindrance to it. Praise the name of our Almighty One!