Pentecost: The Unimaginable Creation of an Improbable Church

Good afternoon, brethren. Good to see you here on this double Sabbath weekend that we have each year when Pentecost arrives. It's delightful to see the mildness of the weather outside. My wife and I were in Texas for our grandson's high school graduation last Sabbath, and it's just always good to get home weather-wise and feel the good old northwest. I'd like to give you a perspective sermon this afternoon, and just to give you a sense of what I mean by perspective sermon. We're all familiar with the collection of Indian blind men who go up to an elephant, and each one touches a different part and makes an assessment based upon what they feel. That's perspective. The one that felt a tail had one view, the one that felt the trunk had a different view, the one that felt the body had another view, the one that felt a leg had another view. So all of those are perspectives, and I'd like to give you a perspective sermon. Tomorrow, we will be celebrating the unimaginable creation of an improbable church.

Now, in this room are people who've been keeping Pentecost for decades, in some cases many decades, and it's very easy over years, even more so over decades, to have a specific view of the day of Pentecost and its events, and as it were, in rehearsing that year after year after year to create the equivalent of a mental rut. And there is this perennial rut that provides our view of the day that we're going to be celebrating tomorrow. I'd like to take your mind out of that rut today, and hopefully tomorrow as you keep the day of Pentecost, it may be with an expanded perspective on the day, a wider view of what was going on. If you had been one of the 120 faithful followers of Christ as Pentecost dawned in 31 A.D., there is no way you could have imagined what things would have been like 24 hours later. It just simply wouldn't have been possible. Even more so, a month, two, three, later, reflecting back what it was like to get up that morning from where you stood three or four months later, it would have been equally unimaginable. What happened on that Pentecost day and in the days that followed was literally the unimaginable creation of a highly improbable church. Let's start by looking at the unimaginable. Did any of the 120 who woke up Pentecost morning believe there would be a full-blown church 24 hours later? What was the last thing on the disciples' mind before Christ ascended into heaven?

The last thing they said to Christ before he ascended was, How soon are you coming back to set up your kingdom? They had one thing on their mind, primarily. They had a second thing on their mind, generally, because Jesus Christ has said to them, I want you to stay put in Jerusalem until the promise of the Spirit comes. Didn't tell them when, didn't tell them how long, just said, don't go anywhere. And so as they woke up Pentecost morning, and then 24 hours got up the next day, it had to be absolutely dizzying to look back at the last 24 hours at what had just happened. Now, they knew, generally speaking, a church was coming. We're all familiar with Matthew 16, 18. In fact, familiar enough with Matthew 16, 18, there's really no need to have to go back and turn to it and read it. That was the promise that Christ made, that he said, I will build my church, and the gates of hell will never prevail against it. Nobody at that time asked him, well, when's that going to be? Can you give us a date? Can you tell us exactly how you're going to do it? He simply said, I am going to build it. That was a given. And once I build it, no one will be able to move it to extinction. That's all they had to work with. Further, as I just said, they knew the Holy Spirit was coming because they were told to stay there and not go anywhere until that promise arrived. But he didn't say when. I think all of them felt soon, justifiably. But Christ didn't tell them, now come Pentecost morning, I will deliver the Holy Spirit. He just said, don't leave Jerusalem. And I will provide the promise. Let's go back and look at that. Acts chapter 1, as Luke begins his account of that time.

Acts chapter 1, verse 1, The former account I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, until the day in which he was taken up after he, through the Holy Spirit, had given commandments to the apostles, whom he had chosen, to whom he was also presented himself alive after his suffering by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God. In being assembled together with him, he commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which he said, You have heard from me. For John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. That's as specific as it was. Don't leave Jerusalem, and I will deliver it not many days from now. So upon arriving upon arising on Pentecost morning, there was nothing they had a firm grip on to look at that day any differently than the day of Pentecost that they had celebrated as Jews from the day they were born. It was Pentecost. There were probably over a million people gathered in Jerusalem from all over the Jewish world. All of the systems, all of the sacrifices, all of the ordinances that would be carried out were routine far beyond our routine. You know, I mentioned that we've been keeping this for years and decades. They had been keeping this for 1,400 years. And so to them, routine was far more routine than our routine. So that small body assembled and worshiped daily between the time of what we read here in Acts chapter 1, verses 1 through 5. The only thing that they could see was Peter's comment that we're one person short in having 12 apostles. And so the only thing on their agenda that they could see from the standpoint of something that was going to happen that they had control over was we from among us need to select someone who has been here from day one, from the time of John the Baptist and the baptizing of Christ. He has been with us. He has been part of us. And we need to fill Judas Iscariot's vacancy. That's the only thing that they really had a firm grip on.

As I said, nobody told them what was going to happen on Pentecost. And furthermore, no one told them where it would lead. You know, the immediate events of that day and the following days and weeks are still mind-boggling. As we walk ahead, I think I'll give you a good opportunity to reflect upon the reality that we all can tend to live in a holy day of rut. There are certain things that we rehearse every year, certain things in our mind we see every year, and it becomes narrow enough that it's just like a rut in a road. Far, far, far more going on on that day of Pentecost than we normally reflect on. Acts chapter 2, if you'll turn there. As I said, we know the story. If I ask any adult in this room to recount the story of what happened on Pentecost, I would expect that every person in the room could recount the story.

Now, let's fill in a lot of blanks. Acts 2 verses 1 through 4. Now, when the day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place, and suddenly there came a sound from heaven as a rushing, mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And then there appeared to them divided tongues as a fire, and one sat 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. That's where we start.

Have you ever stopped to consider that the manifestation of the Holy Spirit was experienced and seen only by 120 people? As Acts begins, as Luke records it, that event took place inside a house. Inside a house, it was occupied by those who were the immediate followers of Jesus Christ. There wasn't anyone else, according to Luke's record, that saw that. So often in the Christian world, in fact, even in the logos of some denominations, there is a tongue of fire. Luke doesn't say, as he records this, that what appeared on the head of each individual was a tongue of fire. Luke says something that appeared like, similar to, in the way it acted, rested on the head of each individual inside that house.

Now, the only warning that they had that it was coming was the sound of a rushing, mighty wind. I remember sitting in a teleconference shortly after I moved to Vancouver in my office. Denny Luecker was in Seattle, also on the teleconference, and the other 10 men on the council were wherever they were. And it was the first time in my life that I heard the freight train that precedes an earthquake. So I don't know what it was like for these people, but I know what it's like to have something coming and have a little bit of an advance warning. And I heard the rumble like that of a freight train, and then the house began to shake, and the windows of the house across the street began to dance. Well, they had the sound of a rushing, mighty wind. And the next thing they had consciously was the fact that on the top of the head of each of those individuals, that was something that flickered as like a tongue of fire. What follows from there leaves us with as many or more questions than we have in those verses, starting in verse 5. Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem, Jews devoured men from every nation under heaven. And when this sound occurred, so the sound went beyond the room. When the sound occurred, the multitude came together and were confused because everyone heard them speak in his own tongue. You know, there's a phenomenal amount in those verses. The sound was heard apparently throughout Jerusalem. Somehow, some way, that sound was directional. Because no matter where it was they heard it, they ended up where the disciples were.

And they were confused. They'd heard the sound. Somehow, you know, I guess it's somewhere, somehow like an air raid siren. We don't live in tornado country, but if you live in tornado country, they sound the same kind of siren. And you don't have a whole lot of trouble as you're panning around, directionally finding out where the sound is coming from. So apparently, the same situation, they could hear directionally where the sound was coming from, and they followed it. And as they followed it, they ended up same part of town, same place as the disciples.

We saw that they were confused for what reason? Everyone heard them speak in his own language. Well, obviously, they came out of the house. You can't help but wonder where they were by the end of this chapter, but we will get to that later on. And the amazement at hearing a sound that was directional enough that they could follow it to get to the place where that 120 were located, then brought them to a place where they were confounded. They were confused. They were scratching their head as to why they were hearing these men speak in their language. Verse 8 says, and how is it that we hear? Well, verse 7, to finish that verse. Then they were all amazed and marveled, saying to one another, Look! Are not all of those who speak Galileans? And how is it that we hear each in his own language in which we were born? Parthians and Medes, Elemites, those dwelling in Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, and the parts of Libya, adjoining Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and Proselytes, Cretans and Arabs. We hear them speaking in our own tongue the wonderful words of God. And so they were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, Whatever could this mean? And others mocking said they're full of new wine. So you had those who were reverent and confused, perplexed, and then you had the cynic. And of course Peter said, Look! It's nine o'clock in the morning. Nobody's drunk. What you are experiencing here, you can't pass off as a group of drunks babbling. You know what's interesting is to ponder what exactly was going on here in more ways than one. We read through this and we see them, apparently all 12 of them. Able to speak in languages that represent all of these countries.

But in all of these scriptures, the word is not language. The word for those who like to do the dive into Greek is a word that when you see it in Greek, you immediately recognize it because the English spelling and the Greek spelling are almost identical. It's dialect.

Among the people gathered here in Jerusalem were collections of people who, based on where they lived, had a broader common language. Those people to the east around Persia would speak Persian. Much of the Western world would have spoken Greek.

There's no way of telling how many distinct languages are represented here. Because the collected body would dominantly be Greek speakers or Persian speakers. But their response is, how is it that they... Let me back the trolley up just one step. Because the little flag that comes up is everybody talking is a person. How is it we hear them speaking in our dialect? I'll give you an idea of what that's like. There's a saying, I don't know who to attribute it to. It's the kind of thing that we hear in our dialect. The knocked dart is tac clier of Latin squared.

I can always tell a Canadian when I hear a boot, and I hear the oot sound, and I say, he almost sounds the same as me, but I hear that Scottish oooh, and I'm listening to a Canadian. When I was a student in Bricket Wood, there were students that said I can tell where you're from in England within 30 miles within a paragraph of your speaking. There are so many dialects in that one small country that you can tell whether a person is from Bristol, you can tell whether they're from Liverpool, you can tell whether they're from Manchester, you can tell whether they are from one of the suburbs of London because of the dialect. So, not that it's either here or there in that it does anything to lessen the miracle, but it leaves the broader question of how many languages were being spoken and how many dialects of a common language were being spoken, and Luke didn't see necessary to say. So let's continue on. Here we have a situation where only 120 saw the visible miracle of the giving of the Holy Spirit. A crowd could follow a directional sound to a place where these men were assembled. They then listened to these men and said, they talk like I do. I was having fun with my grandson, even though he was born and raised in Texas. There's really no indication of that in how he talks. So I was just teasing him a little bit, and he let loose and decided to talk to me as if he had multiple generations of background from the exact spot where he graduated from high school. I just sat there and laughed as I heard a completely, totally different dialect. As we come to the end of this particular day, we of course have multiple problems here. All Luke has given us is Peter's sermon, and he ends the chapter fundamentally with a result. It says all 12 of these men were able to speak in a different dialect. How many places were they speaking? We don't know. How many places in Jerusalem could 3,000 people congregate? Problem number one. How many places in Jerusalem could 3,000 people congregate who could hear a single speaker? There are commentators that do the flight of fancy, and they have meetings scattered throughout the city with different apostles speaking to different groups. They really expand their imagination in ways that when you read the story you simply shrug your shoulders and say, God didn't find it necessary to tell us. What he told us was the bare bones. That's all we needed. What he told us was that the power of the message that Peter gave. That's all we needed to know. But there was far, far more going on that day than what our traditional rut describes. Somewhere toward the end of that day, we arrive at verse 41. Then those who gladly received his word were baptized, and that day about 3,000 souls were added to them. I have probably 10 or more commentaries on my iPad. For those of you that have John Gill as a resource, you will find John Gill entertaining as he deals with verse 41. He's the only one of my commentators that will look at verse 41 and say, how in the world did they baptize 3,000 people in one day?

When I was a senior in Bricket Wood, we held the feast in Wales. At that time, the church was small enough and scattered enough that all the European baptisms were done each year at the Feast of Tabernacles. I remember being assigned to stand in the water at the ladder that came into the outdoor swimming pool to assist each person down the ladder as they went to be baptized. There were probably only 15, 20, 30 maximum. If you divide that group up, each of the 12 apostles baptized 250 people that day. That's a lot of baptisms. I've never timed a baptism, never felt it was necessary. But if you took all that surrounds a baptism, you know, a baptism is a very special, precious event. You don't treat it like a factory event. You come up, okay, you're finished. Next one up, you're finished. And we have the laying on of hands person and we, you know, it's like cans going down a cannery row in a soup factory. This is something that has always been treated with reverence and respect and honor. And so, this was not an assembly line situation. There was a tremendous amount of time spent just baptizing 3,000 people on that day.

What were those people?

The 120 in the room were men and women, mostly men, but it does name some of the women that were in there. Who were the 3,000? Men? Women?

You know, it's very easy to sail along and feel because of the customs of the time that those 3,000 were all men ahead of household. But it doesn't say 3,000 men. It says 3,000 souls. Doesn't discriminate about whether the person going under the water was a male or a female. Now, it would be very convenient if all those souls were men to do some simple math. 3,000 men, we would assume they had 3,000 wives to go along with them. And ultra, ultra, ultra conservative, we'll just assign two children to each household. And we've got a church of 12,000 when the sun sets on Pentecost, bigger than we are in the U.S. in 24 hours. Well, not 24 hours, but between sunrise and sunset. If those souls were men and women, you'd still end up with a church of about 9,000 by the end of the day. I remember interviews that were made of men who were candidates for the Council of Elders in 1996, 1995, 1996. Actually, the meeting was held December of 1995. And I remember responding to a questionnaire. Ed Smith, who was an elder in Cincinnati, Ohio, had previously been its pastor and a regional pastor. And in his interview, Ed said, during the 1960s, there was a period of time where 245 people were baptized in one year in two Cincinnati congregations. Now, by today's standards, that blows your mind. You'd fill the room, looking at the number of people here, probably three times over, with just people baptized, just the Cincinnati congregations. I don't know at that time. Cincinnati at its heyday had four congregations. So I don't know if that's four congregations or three or two. By our modern standards, it's, wow! By their standards, that's a big yawn. 250? Well, we had 3,000 today. As you continue down, let's look at what happens. Acts 4. Hang on. We need to finish this chapter. Acts 2. We had 3,000 on Pentecost. Luke ends that chapter in verse 47 by saying, and the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved. Every day you could take your counter and click off another, who knows how many, click, click, click, click, click, click, we added to the 3,000. Acts 4, verses 1 through 4. Now, as they speak to the people, the priests and captains of the temple and the Sadducees came upon them, being greatly disturbed that they taught the people and preached in Jesus the resurrection from the dead, and they laid hands on them and put them in custody until the next day, for it was already evening. However, many of those who heard the words believed, and the number of the men came to be about 5,000. We're only two chapters along, and we've moved from 3,000 souls in the church to now 5,000 men in the church. Do the same math. 5,000 men mean 5,000 women, and I, for a minute, don't believe that two children per household even comes close to where they were. These were agrarian people, where to do the work on the farm, you had children. If you didn't have children, you didn't get the work done. But we're sitting at 20,000, and not a whole lot of time has passed. Acts 5, verse 14, And believers were increasingly added to the Lord multitudes of both men and women. Anybody have a guess what multitudes amounts to? It's a big number. You don't think of 20, 30, 50 as a multitude. You don't think of 100 as a multitude. How many people does it take sitting in a park before you're to the place? And the word that it comes from is myriad, which makes it even bigger. We have a myriad of men and women added to this body that we conservatively, by the end of chapter 4, saw as 20,000 people.

As we march along to a breakpoint, and the breakpoint is the stoning of Stephen, as we march along to the breakpoint, we come to where the rubber band has been stretched as far as it can be before it snaps. And this is what we see in Acts 6, verse 1. Now in those days when the number of the disciples was a multiplying, there arose a murmuring against the Hebrews by the Hellenists because their widows were neglected in the daily distribution. So it's addressing the equal distribution of food to the widows to make sure that all of them are properly cared for. But it describes this as, we're still going full bore. We're still in the time where things are multiplying. The word added is never in the stream. It's always multiplying, multiplying.

And the icing on the cake comes in verse 7. And the word of God spread, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem. So now we're multiplying greatly, and a great number of the priests were obedient to the faith.

There were at that time the general estimate of 20,000 members of the Aaronic priesthood, not Levites, just the priesthood. And it says a great number. So we have 20,000 priests, and it says a great number of them converted. By time we get to the stoning of Stephen.

And again, Luke doesn't bother to tell us how long the span of time was between the founding of the church and the stoning of Stephen. Some commentators will say it's only a few months. Some commentators will say it was about a year, year and a half. And then there will be a few that will take it out to where they see that whole time period as five or six years or so. Take your pick. It doesn't really matter which it is.

We've got a church with all the multiplying greatlies, the additions of men and women and all the rest. We have a church by the time Stephen is stoned that has got to be 40,000, 50,000 people in number. We have 20,000 within a week or so. And I'm talking about attendees, just like the church today—men and women and their children. We have a huge body of people. Who could ever have guessed? Who could have ever, in their wildest imagination, when they woke up Pentecost morning, have said, I know what's coming down the pike. Let me tell you about it.

They probably all stood, shook their heads, and stood there with their mouths open, speechless. The death of Stephen marked the transitioning from the unimaginable. Everything I've described to you from Acts 1 to Acts 6 were simply beyond the imagination of the people who were there. And when you do the deep dive into what it's saying, it's beyond the imagination of those of us who are in this room today. But the death of Stephen marked the transition point—the transitioning from the unimaginable to the improbable. What follows Stephen is like a dandelion in the wind. You watch a dandelion out in the field, and a breeze hits, and you see all the little white umbrellas rise up. And they ride the currents of the wind, and you wonder, where are they going to go? And how far are they going to go? We read in Acts 2, verses 8 through 11, about where they all came from. They were the diaspora. They came from all over the Roman Empire and, in some cases, beyond the reaches of the Roman Empire to be there for the day of Pentecost. In Acts chapter 8, we see that point where the wind begins to blow and the dandelion begins to scatter. Chapter 8, verse 1, now Saul was consenting to his death—that is, to Stephen's death. At that time, a great persecution arose against the church which was at Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria except the apostles.

You know, brethren, it's not hard to understand because no generation has ever been any different. The question they asked Christ before he ascended was, how long before you come back? And you know what? All of us have been the same. We expect it sooner than later. I have no problem understanding where their scattering went just far enough away from Jerusalem to keep them from being persecuted and close enough to get back there immediately when Christ's feet came back down on the Mount of Olives. They at that time were not going anywhere serious for fear they might miss the great event. So they scattered all the way out around into the portions of Judea, and they went as far as Samaria.

And the unimaginable began to transition to the absolutely improbable. In verse 5 of this same chapter, And Philip went down to the city of Samaria, and preached Christ to them. And the multitudes with one accord heeded the thing spoken by Philip, hearing and seeing the miracles which he did. For unclean spirits, crying with a loud voice, came out of many who were possessed, and many who were paralyzed and lame were healed. There was great joy in that city. And there was a certain man called Simon, who previously practiced sorcery in the city and astonished the people of Samaria, claiming that he was someone great, to whom they all gave heed from the least to the greatest. This man is the great power of God, which they said. But they went on from there to verse 12, and it says, And when they, that is, this multitude, believed Philip as he preached the things concerning the kingdom of God in the name of Jesus Christ, both men and women were baptized.

There were no people on the face of the earth who were a greater anathema to the Jews than the Samaritans. There would have been no concerted effort to go into Samaria and baptize people naturally. And so God just said, okay, I'm going to boot you down the road just far enough that you can still say, what's the news from the Mount of Olives? And yet be it far enough away that the leadership in Jerusalem could not reach out, snatch you, and put you in jail like they had to the apostles. And here you are now in Samaria. And God says, I'm building a church, and I'm not prejudiced like you are. And so here you are with the zeal of having seen what took place on Pentecost, and you can't resist spreading it. And lo and behold, these people are accepting it. And now you're baptizing Samaritans of all things into the church.

Highly, highly improbable. We all know the story of Cornelius. I enjoy reviewing the story of Cornelius because of the humor in it. There was no way that Peter was going to go visit Cornelius, but God didn't give him a choice. And Peter was not going to baptize Cornelius, but he stood there and watched while God gave Cornelius the Holy Spirit, and Peter said, I've been checkmated. I watched what God did. I would never baptize Cornelius, but I watched God give him the Holy Spirit. Who am I to refuse him baptism? So God backed Peter into a corner he couldn't get out of and made him do something he would never have done. The fun part about that story is when he gets back to the church in Jerusalem and starts tap dancing. And read the account. Be a nice read this evening. Read Peter's account of what he did to the church in Jerusalem. He's doing a real fine soft shoe tap dance. Well, you know, it wasn't my fault. I didn't plan that. I wouldn't have done that. But, but, but, but.

And it's all a great testimony to the prejudice that was there that said there is no way that we're baptizing Samaritans and Romans. And you can go on down the line to whoever else. Because Cornelius wasn't circumcised. Well, you don't baptize people like that. Peter said, no, I wouldn't, but God backed me in a corner and he didn't give me a choice. So you're going to have to cut me some slack.

This is where it starts. You know, you could add some people as they know the narrative could add the Ethiopian eunuch, but that's not, that's no big deal. He's already a proselyte. He's already going to church in Jerusalem. So baptizing him is not outside of the realm of orthodoxy, but baptizing Samaritans and uncircumcised Roman centurions, that's, that's a no-no place. You know what none of them knew at that point in time was that God intended to give the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. They got a big surprise there. And that God, he already knew where he was going. He said, I'm going to build an improbable church. These people are in a rut since the days of Abraham and in a greed form, covenanted form from the time of Moses, they have always been a part of an ethnic church. It's never been anything but an ethnic church, and it was never going to be anything but an ethnic church. But I intend, starting on the day of Pentecost, to build a church which defies all their common logic. I'm going to build a church without any of the normal bonding agents.

Ethnicity is one of the strongest bonding agents in religion, and Israel was truly an ethnic church. Two thousand years later, today, we still have a number of bodies that are instantly identified by their ethnicity. We have the whole range of Catholic churches that are not Roman, Russian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, and you can go down the line and add a different nationality in front of the word Orthodox, and it identifies the ethnicity of the body.

We have the state church in England—the Church of England. We have churches that are designated by the geography that they serve—the Southern Baptist. And we have other denominations that are almost purely ethnic—Mennonites, Amish. Among themselves, they know that, okay, you're a Swiss Mennonite, or you're a Dutch Mennonite, but you're an ethnic body, and you've moved as an ethnic body. Ancient Israel was an ethnic church. When ethnicity or nationality is not the glue that holds a body of people together, what do you have? It has been common knowledge for, I don't know how long. George Barna, decades ago, did a survey that simply categorized what was common knowledge.

What makes a church? What makes a congregation? What bonds them together? What brings a group of people together to sit in one room every weekend as a group of people and worship God? Common community. They all live within a set number of miles from where the building is. All of us in the ministry have visited people, commented, they've been reading our literature, you go to the place where they say, where's the church? And they say, oh, well, that's 50 miles away. Have you got something in the neighborhood?

And when they find out you don't have something in the neighborhood, that's the end of the visit. They simply are looking for, is there something within four, five, six, seven, maybe 10 miles of where I am? If so, I'm going. Common outlook. We're all of a liberal leaning. We're all of a conservative leaning. Common education. A church that appeals to people who are college educated. A church that appeals to people who are not college educated.

Common race. How many times driving down the streets of Portland can you go by a church that says, here's our English service, here's our Spanish service? Same building. One service is for one ethnic group. One service is for another ethnic group. Mr. Kubik, when he's visited in the area, has commented on some substantially sized Ukrainian and they are fundamentally all Ukrainian. And so, common race.

In some cases, it's common economic status. In all ethnically diverse nations, these are the things that make a church. So, as you go around looking at churches, you can say there's a body and it will meet. And most of the people there will have been within four or five miles of the building. Well, here's a church where we can tell by the signage that the service will all primarily be one ethnic group.

And we can go through the list that we've already given. But God said, those are the common glues. I have a super glue and I don't care about any of those. I intend to create a church that will require a different bonding agent than that. And unlike normal churches, it's not going to be a gathering of people who came together because they're all the same nationality, they're all the same color, they all came from the same suburb, they all had the same level of education, and they all basically have the same income level. That's an improbable church. When you say, I'm taking all the standards, wiping them all off the table in the garbage can, and I'm going to build a church, you now have an improbable church.

And the only way to build an improbable church is to have a super glue. And the Holy Spirit is that glue. God Almighty realized on the day of Pentecost, if I am going to build my church, and it is not going to be a normal church, I need the glue as I build the body. And so the church and the glue were placed on the table the same day.

We already demonstrated how the glues work. We have a Jew by the name of Philip who goes up to Samaria into the land that all of them just hold their nose and say, pew, we don't go there, we don't like those people, and we have nothing in common with them. And the next thing you know, he's putting a Samaritan under the water, baptizing him in the name of Jesus Christ, laying hands on him to receive the Holy Spirit, and not just one or two, but a large number of men and women. Superglue.

As the church spread, the Holy Spirit glued all sorts of diverse components together. Turn to Galatians 3.

You want to see the best of bonding agents? Here it is. Galatians 3, verse 26. For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. All of you, as many of you as were baptized into Christ, all of you. As a result, it's not a Jewish church, it's not a Greek church, it's not a church of slaves, or not a church of free, neither male or female, for you're all one in Christ Jesus. For if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise. We're an odd group. All of us have experienced the same thing. And the farther you go, those of you who have had the opportunity to travel overseas to other continents for the Feast of Tabernacles, it's most marked when you've gone to Asia, or you've gone to Europe, or you've gone to Australia, or you've gone to India, or Sri Lanka. You've gone to India, or Sri Lanka.

We meet and become friends with people whom we would never have met in our entire lifetime. We've had occasion to spend time under normal circumstances, and they become more than friends. They have become family. And we do it over and over and over again. We travel to anywhere on the face of this earth to go to a Feast of Tabernacles and know, even though we may not speak their language, we may not be the same color, we may have nothing else in common. The commonality of the Spirit of God immediately makes us family. That's an unprobable church. Mark 10.

Mark chapter 10. This was the promise. You read it in the Bible, and it's academic. I read the promise. Here's the promise. It's an academic promise. We've all lived the promise. And then it's no longer academic.

Mark chapter 10 and verse 28. Then Peter began to say to him, See, we've left all and followed you. And Jesus answered and said to him, Assuredly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or fathers or mothers or wife or children or lands for my namesake and the Gospels, who shall not receive a hundredfold now in this time houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children.

We've all been there.

We've all been there. We can be invited to homes anywhere on the face of this earth, just as if we were family, to people we had never met before that day at a church service. And it's not something we look at as, oh, well, that's just a courtesy. They're just being nice. Now it's a bond. It's a bond.

On Passover the Last, Christ made a couple of promises. He made it repeatedly in John 14, 15, and 16, where he said, I'm going to send you the Holy Spirit. And he said, it will lead you into all truth.

I remember when we came into the church, one of the common ways, people didn't say, when were you baptized? People said, when did you come into the truth? That's how we addressed one another. That was a common way of introduction. When did you come into the truth? They sound strange. We don't have the same influx as we had back then, so it's not as common to hear it. Someone may say, when were you called? But it was very, very common language when we began attending church. Well, how did you come into the truth? When did you come into the truth? The promise that Christ gave the disciples is, I will give you the Holy Spirit, and it will lead you into all truth. The Holy Spirit is the glue. What it uses is a commonality of understanding. Matthew 13, a very, very well-known portion of Christ's words. It's where Christ began speaking in parables. And it was where His disciples said, well, why do you speak to them in parables? And He said very plainly, why? He said, this is why I speak in parables. Verse 11, Because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.

After years and years go by, you may think of it as just, well, that's life. That's the way it is. This is what I believe. It's just not that simple. It's profound. I have not given it. I gave it to you. He goes on in verse 16 to say, But blessed are your ears, for they see. Blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear.

The bond of the Holy Spirit is no matter where you go. You start a conversation, and we're all exactly on the same page. I may not even speak your language. I may need a translator to translate between the two of us, but I know even then that everything that comes from you will be exactly what comes from me, because it's the same spirit that gave it all. It's that spirit which is the glue. And it's that glue that makes an improbable church possible. So here we are, brethren, the day before the day of Pentecost, and we are just one congregation of many, many congregations that together constitute an improbable church who will tomorrow celebrate an unimaginable beginning.