Receiving the Promise of Pentecost.

While we were in worship, I was reminded of somebody very important for today for Pentecost Sunday. Pentecost is just a word that comes from penta, which is 50. Pentecost was actually 50 days from Passover in the Jewish calendar. You had the Feast of Passover that ended, and then you count 50 days, and then it's Shavuot. Shavuot, which means it's a festival of weeks. You count those weeks, those seven weeks, basically. And then you're on the day of Pentecost.

When the day of Pentecost had fully come, they were together in an upper room. During worship we read about the Pentecost Sunday. I thought of somebody very important in the history of the Assemblies of God. This is an Assemblies church. I wanted to highlight her. Her name is Lucy Farrow.

Lucy Farrow was born in 1847 in Virginia. She was sold into slavery. She was likely the daughter of an enslaved mother and a white father, with many records suggesting she was the niece of Frederick Douglass, her mother being Douglass' sister. By 1871, she had married and moved to Mississippi. Tragically, her husband and five of her children passed away before 1900, prompting her to relocate to Houston, Texas with her remaining son.

Like many African Americans of her time, Farrow sought solace and community in the church. Her evident leadership abilities were soon put to use within the growing holiness movement. The holiness movement was born out of the early church day of Pentecost, but through church history some of its roots traced through Augustine and then to Luther and then eventually to the Moravians and to the Methodists. That's where the roots of the Assemblies of God is, in the Methodists in California.

Farrow was pastoring in 1905. The Lord called her, and she was pastoring a small holiness church in Houston. Then she was hired by Charles Parham to serve as a governess for his children during a summer trip to Kansas. In her absence, she asked her fellow holiness preacher, William Seymour, to fill her pulpit. During that time, Farrow became the first reported African-American to experience what is known now as the baptism of the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues.

Upon her return, Seymour was deeply moved when he heard her speaking in this language, and he asked about this remarkable experience. Farrow introduced Seymour to Parham, who was a white man, but he was a preacher, and they were friends there, who enrolled him in his Bible school, and plans were made to have Seymour lead the Pentecostal work among the African-American community in Houston.

Farrow continued her role in Parham and Seymour's meetings, working the altar, the prayer times, and as a cook for the Bible school while pastoring the church. When somebody named Neely Terry from Los Angeles visited Houston, she heard Seymour preach at Farrow's church. Upon returning to California, Terry urged her pastor, Julia Hutchins, to invite Seymour to take over her pulpit while she went on a missions trip to Liberia. Despite Parham's plans for Seymour in Houston, Seymour agreed to assist Hutchins' church in Los Angeles.

Though Seymour had not yet experienced the baptism in the Holy Spirit as Parham taught it, Farrow was described as one of the most helpful of the workers during the Azusa Street revival. She still felt called to return to Norfolk, Virginia. She went from the revival in Los Angeles back to Virginia. On the way home, she passed through Houston where she preached at a camp meeting. Long lines formed as people sought prayer and everyone she prayed for began speaking in other languages and tongues. Among those was Howard Goss who was so amazed by this power of the Holy Spirit. He went on to tell another person who told another person in Arkansas and then she got to go there. The Holy Spirit was using her in all these places.

She ended up in Liberia as a missionary and received the gift to be able to speak to them in their language. She led some of them to the Lord there. Then she came back. Tragically, her son died in 1906, right after that. Then she died. I just turned 60. She died at 59 in 1911. The Lord had a plan for her. He used her mightily in her day and then he took her to himself. That's basically what the Holy Spirit decided for her life.

We remember people that stepped out in faith and that believed the promise of God and that saw his goodness in their generation. We're standing on their shoulders today because you're basically worshiping in a space that was helped to be created by someone's faith before us. We give thanks. We give glory to God, of course. That's all glory and praise to him. But I wanted us to just remember, we're not new in this here. God has something for all of you by his spirit to do in your generation, and he'll give you what you need to do it. If he can use someone from that kind of background, he can definitely do the same for you.

Ask, Seek, and Knock

It's a very powerful story. Pastor Abbie laid out for us this year that we're going to start with the Sermon on the Mount. We've been going through Matthew in the Sermon on the Mount together. Today just happens to be the day of ask, seek, and knock. Luke tells us that that is for a specific gift, the Holy Spirit. Your Father will give you a good gift of the Holy Spirit. We've already been in his presence. We've already been receiving him together. We're already fulfilling what Jesus said about asking seeking and knocking together.

I want us to look at the Word of God together on this and see what more the Holy Spirit would give us from the words of Jesus.

I have one more story for you. My mom. She's next to Miller Park and she's on a bike and she's 86. It's an electric bike so she can keep up with me. We were on that trail that goes by State Fair Park, goes to Miller Park down there around Milwaukee. This was the vision I had. Holy Spirit, I'm praying, Lord, how do I bless my mom, right. Well, she loves to ride the electric bike. So I'm going to put it in my van and I'm going to take her this Wednesday, last Wednesday, to Miller Park and back.

We go and get her mirror fixed at a bike place. Somehow the van keys go under the stow and go and under the seat. Yeah, they get stuck right under the seat. I'm living out ask, seek, and knock. I had studied it Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Jesus' words, ask, seek, and knock. And here I am in the middle of this where we're not finding this for about an hour because when they're under the stow and go seat, you don't think I've got to lift up the whole stow and go to find my keys. But that's what it was. You put your hands, don't look just with your eyes, look with your hands and look with your feet, my mom would tell me.

So I said, okay, we're going to look with our hands, we're going to look with our feet, and we're going to look with our eyes. If that doesn't work, just start cleaning, because once you start cleaning, automatically you're going to find. One of our add-ons for our family was clean and you'll find it. It's true. It's true. You might not always find what you're looking for, but you'll find something and that'll make you happy and joyful about whatever else was lost.

So ask, seek, and knock. I put two words there. Glory matters. This was the glory. I wanted to bless my mom. I wanted to honor her. I wanted to give honor where honor is due. I wanted to bless her. But I had to ask, seek, and knock and go through a process of finding those keys and then going back to where we needed to go. It's always like that in our walk. The Lord he makes it that way so that we'll get to know him even more, so that we'll rely on his Holy Spirit more and more. Because if we could do it ourselves who gets the glory. We do and we didn't create.

Let's try an experiment. Say tree. Now say let there be tree be. Nope, none of you are God. Only God has that power. You can't speak a Cadillac into existence. The word of faith can only go so far from your mouth because you're not God. You can't create ex nihilio. You can't create something out of nothing. The only thing you can do is agree with what he's saying and speak it.

Ask, seek, and knock. There we go. This is the ask principle. Make it easy in English. A-S-K. I've invited someone to read for me today who I believe will have a clear voice for us to hear the Word of God. Matthew 7:7:

Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives. The one who seeks finds. And the one who knocks the door will be opened. Which of you if your son asks for bread will give him a stone. Or if he asks for a fish will give him a snake. If you then though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children. How much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him. So in everything do to others what you would have them do to you. For this sums up the law and the prophets.

Matthew 7:7-12

The depths of our evil nature

The so what today is, did you notice what Jesus called us evil. Does that surprise you. He knows our nature. He knows who we are. So then you being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children. How much more will he give you.

How can we receive the good gifts from a good father when we're evil. The depths of our evil nature and mindset are foreign to us. It takes the word of Jesus and the work of the Spirit to reveal that depravity inside and out. We also desire to save ourselves and be like God. We want to define what justice is. We want to define what everything is and how it should be done. We also desire glory. We are deceived and we are dead. It's only the death of Jesus Christ on the cross that can take that deadness of us and that can make us alive again in him. Then he gets the glory.

The Lord Jesus is worthy of all glory. Why. Because all things were made through him. Without him, nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men, and that light shines in the darkness.

Paul says it this way in Ephesians 2:

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.

Ephesians 2:1-2

I love this city. I love the people of this city. Always have, since I came here in 1983. Always loved them. But I knew that I came into it as somebody needing more than I had. I'd been raised in a Christian home all the way up, but my walk with Jesus was like a rollercoaster. I would have my highs and I'd have my lows. I lacked the power to overcome sin and the grace of God in my heart. I would go to the Lord and I would always cry out to him for repentance. I had a hill next to my house and I would go on top of that hill and I would just pray to the Lord. I'd say, just cleanse me, Lord, cleanse me. Right.

Is anybody in that cycle. But what the Lord said is, if you go to this place, you're going to need more, and I didn't hear that right away. It took a car accident. I rolled a car at like 60 miles an hour on the way up to see the Badgers play the Gophers, and the Lord arrested me, and then the next Sunday, I went to a church service like this, and a wrestling coach from UW came up to me, and he said you're full of pride and God is opposed to the proud but he gives grace to the humble. You're also full of lust and he wants to set you free from that and today is the day of salvation.

I had a choice, didn't I. I could say get on my face in pride, you know, but God gave me the grace to say yes, sir. On Dodie Street, on the corner of Dodie, there's a house and there's a basement. I went down there for an hour and I saw the cross and the Holy Spirit revealed every sin. Then he cleansed me.

All I needed was just another person there to confess sin with and to pray for me. Sometimes that's all you need. That's why we have these groups this summer where you can do that. You don't have to have this traumatic experience where a wrestler comes up to you and says, come on, let's go wrestle in a basement, right. The Lord might do that. I was, you know, a puddle. I was just, and I felt completely exhausted and empty after.

Then he prayed for me to be filled and baptized with the Holy Spirit. It filled me up. The first thing I did is I went to the room down in Humanities, and I banged down the piano, and I sang scripture to God. I haven't stopped since, literally since that time. That's been my go-to for devotion. That's the outworking of the Holy Spirit.

I did start praying in tongues later and had that language come as a gift. It's a real gift to me because I don't want to live in my head. I want to live from the Spirit. But God met me and gave me grace to believe him and gave me grace to follow him. The cross led me to receive that gift of the Holy Spirit and the baptism that he had for me. That's the power of God. It's the glory of God. So Madison, I love it, but I know they need that. They need the Holy Spirit. They need the humility of God so that God will not be opposed to the proud but he'll give grace to the humble in our city. May it be, Lord.

All of us also lived among them at one time. We were gratifying the cravings of our flesh, following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath, even before we started doing all of those things by our nature, because we were from the first Adam. We needed the second Adam to come and to recreate us.

Here's the beautiful part. This is the fun part.

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our transgressions. It is by grace that you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages, he might show the incomparable riches of his grace expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not from yourselves. It's a gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.

Ephesians 2:4-9

That's why you have to ask, seek, and knock. It's not from you. It's from outside in. You can't save yourself by becoming the best version of yourself. I'm sorry. You can't save yourself by going further into the houses of your soul and the windows and opening them up and seeing what kind of goodness there might be in there. There's nothing there. You're dead. This is the truth and it sets us free, totally free. It's from God. It's a gift of God, not by works. You could go and serve. If I give my body to be burned or my everything I have to the poor, but I don't have his love in my heart received by the Holy Spirit, I am nothing.

For we are God's handiwork created, recreated in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Ephesians 2:10

From the inside out then, the Holy Spirit comes and he fills you with that inspiration and those ideas. He gives you the people to work with, saved, unsaved, that you're there and you're a witness to the ones that are yet to believe. You're a brother and sister to the ones that are with you in that fight together. Amen.

If the creation has taken this long for us to figure out this much about it up until this point, how much more do you think the kindness and the goodness and the revelation of the new creation is going to be. It's going to take an eternity for him to reveal that to us. So eternity is not going to be you on a cloud, on a harp, just going like this. It's going to be him unfolding his riches and his goodness to you forever. That won't seem like forever. It'll be like a day because with the Lord, a thousand years is a day and a day is a thousand years. You won't have the mindset that this is going on forever and ever and ever. You'll be in his presence, learning of his kindness, learning of his goodness forever. You'll be asking still. You'll be seeking still. You'll be knocking still. This process is part of who we are. You'll be searching out the riches of his goodness together and he'll be unfolding them to us because there's no end to it because it's eternal. It was, it is, and it always will be. It's always ongoing that way. Praise to his name.

So we're asking him, even though we are evil, we're asking him to come from the outside in and to save us and then to renew us from the inside out. We already heard from Abbie and other teachers to seek first his kingdom, his righteousness, and then everything else is added to us. He alone defines us in his image. He defines what love is to us on his cross and he gives us what we need, himself, the Holy Spirit, to truly live before him.

Receive the Holy Spirit

He exhorts us, Jesus, today. He's using the gift of exhortation and he's saying, ask, and in the Greek, it means what. Keep asking. Seek and keep seeking. Knock and keep knocking. Don't give up.

Luke expands this idea for us to the root or the source of Jesus' teaching. It's the power to receive this inside-out salvation and to pray his will effectively and relationally. It's the good gift of the Holy Spirit.

And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, if you feel powerless today, today is the right time for you. Christ died for the ungodly.

Romans 5:5-6

In Romans 8:13-15:

For if you live according to the flesh you will die. But if you live by the Spirit, you will put to death the misdeeds of the body. You will live. For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves so that you live in fear again. Rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship, and by him we cry, Abba, Father.

Romans 8:13-15

And here's what God revealed to Wesley. The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. Now, if we are children, we're heirs. Heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ. If indeed we share his sufferings, that we might share in his glory. There it is. Glory matters. He's getting the glory through that process in your life.

Has the Spirit of God said a yes to you in your heart. Has he given you an assurance that you are his child. If not, today you can receive that assurance by the Holy Spirit. It's the gift of God.

Wesley saw the Moravians on a ship that was being blown apart in the Atlantic and they were basically singing psalms and their children were singing with them and the main mast went down. On the other side were all these British Anglicans and they were screaming in terror for fear of going to hell. I'm not knocking Anglican. I was an Anglican for nine years. There are lots of people who love God. Many, many, they love him with all their heart.

And he said, what do you have. And they said, we've received his witness in our hearts that we're his children and we have no fear of death. We have no fear of anything that way. He said, I want that. He was coming back from Georgia where he had failed as a missionary and he's coming back to England at that time. Praise the Lord.

Luke 11: The parable of asking

Let's look at one more scripture. This is the one that is the parallel scripture to the one we have been given for today. Luke tells us a little bit more about what Matthew 7 said.

One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples." He said to them, [inaudible] no food to offer him. Then the one inside answers, "Don't bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can't get up and give you anything." I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet (oh wait, I lost my train, I lost myself, oh yeah) because of your shameless audacity he will surely get up and give you as much as you need. So I say to you, ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives. The one who seeks finds. And to the one who knocks the door will be opened.

Luke 11:1-10

Lord, I thank you for your word to us. Lord, today we are here to ask and we've been asking. We're here to seek and we've been seeking. Lord, you hold the keys of David. What you open no one can shut and what you shut no one can open. Lord we ask you for that good gift and we thank you that you're a good father who gives a good gift to those that you love and that you call and that you give the gift of repentance to.

Jesus says that he will give the Holy Spirit, the good gift to those who ask. He's called the Promise. He's called the Gift. He's called your Counselor. He gets glory in your life for being your counselor. Comforter. He comes along so you can comfort other people. This is my favorite one lately. He's called the Helper. I need lots of help.

He's called the Spirit of Truth. He will remind you of everything Jesus has taught you. He's called the Baptizer in the Holy Spirit or the Convincer. The one who convicts the world concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment. He's the Producer. He makes things real in the earth.

Prayer is sourced. This kind of prayer that he's talking about, asking, seeking, and knocking, is sourced from the Spirit. He gives you the ability to say, yes, God, I believe you are, and that you are a rewarder of those who diligently seek you. So I'm going to keep asking, like the person at midnight, I'm going to keep knocking for this. Not for me necessarily alone, but for all those who will be affected through it.

Prayer is sourced and sustained by the Spirit and answered to the Spirit. Works, true works, are inspired or breathed by the Spirit, empowered by the Spirit, and it's to the Father's glory.

Now what: Receive the Holy Spirit

The now what today is this. It's pretty simple. Receive the Holy Spirit. He will work in us the death. We're already dead. He'll work that death in us. He took that death from us in the resurrection of Christ so that we can ask and seek and knock today and going forward. Praise the Father for his good gift.

Amen.

So we're going to do that just a little bit more today. We have just enough time to allow, if you've heard something from him during his word time here and you want to respond in your heart, I encourage you. If you're like, "Man, I'm full, I'm set, I'm ready for today," then begin to allow the Holy Spirit to do what he's so good at. He's going to give you people in your heart and mind. He's going to use you today to intercede for them. He's going to make you a channel for other people today. That's what he does when we're together sometimes. Maybe somebody in the room, maybe somebody in your family, but he'll intercede through you. Some of you might receive a gift from him where you'll intercede with groans too deep for words. That's another way of saying in the Spirit, sometimes we talk about it, the gift of tongues.

Does everybody speak in tongues? No. Are we going to push you over? No. But what are we going to do? We're going to receive what the Father has for us if we have it. And it's good to do it again, even if we did during worship. I'm going to receive again so I can pray effectively.

One last testimony as the worship team comes up. My father had an experience that really set cement in his life and in his faith. He was just coming to faith, and he was 32 years old, and he had five kids, and I was the youngest, and he needed salvation. It came to him through the preaching of the word. Somebody was just sharing, like I'm sharing today, and he responded to the Lord and said yes. I open my heart. I want to receive what God has. His conversion or his change was overnight. My mom saw it, everybody was amazed at the difference in his life.

So he goes down to get baptized at a church on the border between Wisconsin and Illinois, and there's somebody there in line ahead of him giving a testimony. It's a professor of ancient Greek. She says I was invited to church and I came and somebody started speaking a language that only I and my professor colleagues know. It was ancient Greek. It was a regular congregation member, and he was saying, "Why do you resist me? Humble yourself and receive the gift of salvation." And she went, "Here I am today and I'm going to be baptized because I received the gift of salvation."

And my dad was next in line after her. He said, "Put me in the water. Fill me up with the Lord." And afterwards, in their changing area, he said he felt like liquid love. The love of God just being poured out upon him. He had a very rough childhood. Alcoholic parents. Brokenness, just a lot of brokenness. But that was the breakthrough for him.

And then the receiving of that for generation after generation. What I'm saying is you don't know what transaction or what thing the Holy Spirit will do with your heart that will affect you, your children, and your children's children. The gift and the promise Peter said on Pentecost is for you and your children. So think of it generationally too and just begin to receive what the Lord has for you.

Amen.

He is good.