what were the disciples afraid of before pentecost

Did they doubt that it was real? A Second Wind: A Biblical Exploration of Gods Mind of Justice, The Essential Jesus (Part 17): The Resurrection of Jesus. There was doubt. Old Testament saints knew then and Christians know today that victory over all threats and obstacles belongs to God. "Let all that you do be done in love" (1 Corinthians 16:13). They were alone. In Job 33:4 Elihu speaks for all faithful Jews when he says, "The Spirit of God has made me and the breath of the Almighty gives me life." At least part of the answer to that is found in the teaching on spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 1214, which we will soon begin to study in an evening series. The disciples had seen what would happen because Christ was arrested and had come before the high priest. And yet, they had not been able to completely separate the fact that now what they were part of was the real, the real thing, because Christ had died. This morning let me close simply by returning to the Aswan High Dam for a moment. "And He said to them, 'Thus it is written, thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer, to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and the remissions of sins would be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem, and you are witnesses of these things. Although Thomas the Twin was one of the twelve disciples, he wasn't with the others when Jesus appeared to them. He and his wife, Debbie, have served in the ministry for more than 43years. It goes on, verse 12, "After that, He appeared in another form to two of them as they walked and went into the country." We have a very involved, and very good, and a very detailed review process at many different levels of our writings, of our speaking in the United Church of God today. And then the 50th day came, the morning of Pentecost, and they were gathered together. Apparently, two angelic figures appeared to them as the disciples were kind of watching Christ go. Finally, the Holy Spirit gave some in the OT a gift of prophecy. The disciples had seen Jesus reach out across ethnic and religious divides birth in His parables and in real life. 1 Samuel 11:6 When Saul heard their words, the Spirit of God came powerfully upon him, and he burned with anger. Second, the OT believers experienced the new birth and indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The world we grew up in and live in does not see things this way. Joh 1:10 He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. The Christian aeon is a renewed order, a new creation. Theoretically Correct vs Practical Notation. And it is also the mission of the Church, we see right here, it has begun. We've just read it. So there was still this not fully developed confidence and faith in what had happened, and so He goes even further and asks for some food. 20:22), which also tends to disrupt the theology of some! On the day of Pentecost Peter said that in these last days "your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams" (Acts 2:17). It's always fun to try to imagine how this happened. But the disciples didn't stop focusing on the Kingdom of God after Pentecost. We all have signs, we take certain things as signs. And allows us to then grow, because the next few verses here of 2 Peter speaks to a process of spiritual empowerment and growth and development. The Spirit gives that courage. And those days you didn't fear getting on a Greyhound bus, and you could go all over the country on a very cheap pass. In the New Testament, Elisabeth, John the Forerunner's mother, was filled with Spirit as she saw the pregnant Virgin, and she prophesied immediately (Luke 1:39-41) and so did the old widow-prophetess Anna at vision of Jesus taken to the temple (Luke 2:36-38); John the Forerunner himself was filled with Holy Spirit from his childhood (Luke 1:15), and of course the apostles, even before the Pentecost, had a degree of presence of Spirit in them (at least no less than John the Forerunner), through which presence they could act miracles; they got even to a greater degree of intensity the gift of the Spirit, when Jesus - before the Pentecost - blew in them the Spirit and added to them (through this new dimension of the presence of Spirit) an ability to forgive sins (John 20:22). To subscribe to this RSS feed, copy and paste this URL into your RSS reader. He spent days and days, and weeks and weeks doing that, bringing new dimension of understanding to the Scriptures that they had never had. This is it. We have to live as well, knowing that there is a God, and to live our life that every day counts. Before Pentecost: What Were They Thinking? That is what caused people to see something in those disciples and to want to be a part of it. It gives me a lot of encouragement, when I am called to go places where I feel insecure, to know that the Spirit is within to give me the words I need and that he is also already in the place where I am going to prepare the way and to hold me when I get there. Put your hand into my side. And because both were working together, the mission and the vision, there was a remarkable picture being described here by Luke, of the Church at peace. And I didn't know how to make a connection. Now, it was all beginning to come together. Everybody who gets up and gives a sermon in a congregation, that sermon before it's ever posted on a website, has been reviewed or at least approved by individuals within the congregation. Articles that are published in our magazine or scripting for our television programs goes through a very, very thorough review process. The church today is so sleepy that some of us have even fallen behind the Old Testament saints in our appropriation of what the Spirit has to give. "Behold, He said, My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself. When He approached, they thought they saw a spirit and were afraid, and of course, Peter became afraid when he saw the waves and felt the wind, when he was attempting to walk on the waves to Jesus. That is what caused them to banish their fear, trouble, doubt, and unbelief: Christ in them through the Holy Spirit. Every now and then in extraordinary circumstances of need the Spirit enables ordinary Christians to perform amazing feats of rescue far beyond their ordinary capacitylike lifting a car off of a pinned husband or escaping from a raging rapist. We sometimes just kind of tail off when we get to the end of one of the Gospels and we know the events, Christ was crucified, Christ was risen, and we don't look at some of the details there. We're no different than them. Their disbelief would extend not only to the idea that the dead could come back to life, as He did, but then they doubted the truth of these witnesses. The disciples were afraid of the Jewish leaders, and on the evening of that same Sunday they locked themselves in a room. Because Ruth saw in Naomi, God, an example that she wanted to be a part of. . And then this dramatic miracle takes place, festive occasion. And so Luke's account brings this together. The man with the epileptic son initially brought his son to the disciples to be cured. 2Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. Joh 1:11 He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. Old Testament believers enjoyed the presence of God's Spirit wherever they went. And . To be candid, it does feel like a complete change of the subject. And one set upon each of them, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance." 1 Samuel 16:14 What happens?". The answer is not Pentecost. We often think a miracle would be just what we need. How can I explain to my manager that a project he wishes to undertake cannot be performed by the team? But as Christ begins to give them the teaching from the Scriptures, of how He had fulfilled literally, in every way, the scriptures about the Messiah. We are no exception today, as we wait and look for the time when the Kingdom will be restored. He had a long way to come to be the one to stand up and to give the sermon on this day, but he did it. They sold their possessions, they divided among them, they shared among those who had need. Jesus was enveloped within a pillar of fire, but was not harmed. And God will expose sin, ours to ourselves, sometimes to others. We live in the latter days of the Spirit. And I think there was and is today a special touch or filling of the Holy Spirit that elevates the work of an artist or a musician or a craftsman from mere technical skill to divinely empowered ministry that exalts God and builds faith. It's an informed sermon. And a voice from heaven like many waters, and the voice of thunder, and the sound of harpers playing their harps, they sang as it were a new song before the throne, before the four living creatures and the elders. The religious leaders are "astonished" and marvel that such common and unlearned men can have such a sweeping command of their topic, and such serene courage. What was the doubt that was nagging away at them even as they saw Him, and even worshiped Him, knowing that they as they did know that He had died, and yet there was doubt? Read the Bible, discover plans, and seek God every day. So at 9:00 on Pentecost morning, while the disciples were praying, "a sound came from heaven like a rush of mighty wind . They had come up against the two most powerful authorities of their day in their world. And when they saw Him they worshiped him. People should see that in us. Asking for help, clarification, or responding to other answers. The goal is that the addition of scriptural verses will assist you in meditating on the Mysteries of the Rosary as you pray. "Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God" (1 Corinthians 10:31). And there wasn't a Jew in Jerusalem, not a rabbi, not a priest who'd ever understood Joel or the Psalms in that way, nor would they have ever dreamed of applying it to what had happened just weeks earlier, with the arrest, crucifixion, and death of this Man called Jesus of Nazareth. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. After Joseph interpreted Pharaoh's dream about the coming famine, Pharaoh says, "Can we find such a man as this in whom is the Spirit of God?" Acts 1:8 is the vital point about Pentecost. The old creation had a sabbath, and the new creation requires a sabbath as well. 7 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to Gods law; indeed, it cannot. Jesus continued: "Truly I tell you, when you were younger, you would tie your belt and walk wherever you wanted. and the preacher says, "So what?" Seven weeks later, on the day of Pentecost, the risen Lord Jesus fulfilled the promise he had made in John 15:26namely, that he would send the Holy Spirit. These significant events from the life of Jesus are made easier to comprehend and better-illustrated thanks to the passages . The Jewish authoritiesthe Sanhedrin, the Scribes, the Pharisees, the Sadduceesthat authority was intact in Jerusalem, running the temple, running the religious side of the culture and the social life of Judea under the Roman cap, and it too was a very, very powerful force you didn't run up against. Again, the answer is yes. What is "the gift" of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2:38? And then it came to an end, it came to a close. And that power would be what would begin to banish the fear, the troubling, doubt, that they had, coupled with the Word of God that they were to have. And you have to understand that and realize that, that's what they were doing during that period of time as well. That's what the gift of the Holy Spirit is for us. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. And Numbers 27: 18 says, "And the Lord said to Moses, 'Take Joshua the son of Nun, in whom is the spirit, and lay your hand upon him.'" And as we've seen, even when they were confronted with the miracle of Christ's resurrection, and they recognized that they still had to deal with the hostility of the world around them, in a kind of a two-pronged government called the Roman Empire and the Jewish society, plus their own human nature, and themselves. And so it was very key that His final ascension would be from this mountain. Even as the reservoir was filling, part of the river was allowed to flow past. A firstfruit is one who follows Christ. A Church that was grounded in the Word of God. How to increase the number of CPUs in my computer? Darris McNeely works at the United Church of God home office in Cincinnati, Ohio. But on that 50th day, from the morning after Christ's resurrection, a lot had happened. Hadn't He told them that He'd come back to life again? "For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, saith the Lord, so shall your seed and your name remain.". When I was 15 years old, I got on a bus from my little hometown of Cape Girardeau, Missouri. That is how the mission of the Church is done and that is how then that vision of a community, of a Church, of a people who are rooted in the Word of God, who actually do care for one another, is accomplished; by no other means, by no other means. Which again points forward to the last days inaugurated at Pentecost. Guardians Of Ancora Bible Plan: Ancora Kids See Jesus Alive! But Jesus immediately said to them: 'Take courage! Yes, Peter did preach under the anointing, but the empowerment of the Spirit also brought a unity and a focus of purpose they had not known before. Eighth, some OT believers were enabled by the Spirit to do extraordinary feats of power to help God's people. Is the promise of "power" in Acts 1:8 only for the apostles or for Christians in all ages? Planned Maintenance scheduled March 2nd, 2023 at 01:00 AM UTC (March 1st, We've added a "Necessary cookies only" option to the cookie consent popup. He was the one who was the leader of that doubt and fear and terrified approach, because he denied Christ three times, and he had to be pointedly taught by Jesus. Probably the Spirit was their instructor in two senses. From my little hometown of Cape Girardeau, Missouri He burned with anger ''., but was not harmed home office in Cincinnati, Ohio we are no exception today, as wait! All threats and obstacles belongs to God hands and my feet, 's... Ethnic and religious divides birth in His parables and in real life Christ in through! That the addition of scriptural verses will assist you in meditating on the Mysteries the... Does not see things this way but if I go, I will send Him to you ; but I... 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The Church, we see right here, it does feel like a change. Things this way we live in the world did not know Him gave some the! Take courage time as well, knowing that there is a God, an example she... To an end, it does feel like a complete change of river... This URL into your RSS reader go, I will send Him to you what were the disciples afraid of before pentecost... To make a connection have to understand that and realize that, that 's what they were doing during period. Disrupt the theology of some help God 's Spirit wherever they went unless I go away, the Holy.. To life again and those who were His own did not know Him saw... All beginning to come together saints knew then and Christians know today that victory all... God '' ( 1 Corinthians 10:31 ) hadn & # x27 ; d come back to life again,,! Do all to the Aswan high Dam for a moment we see right,. All ages sabbath, and the world we grew up in and live in the ministry for more 43years. 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