They weren't orphans, and we are not either in our life. Even though they had seen miracles, again, another indication to us always to remember that miracles are important, miracles can be faith-builders, but miracles by themselves will not do it all. How do we handle them? Luke 24:53 says that the disciples stayed continually at the Temple praising God. Think about that among our own relationships with each other. We do well to read about these things, and ask ourselves the simple question: if they experienced so much of God's Spirit which was but a trickle of the reservoir, how much more should we enjoy under the dozen turbines of Pentecost? That is what caused people to see something in those disciples and to want to be a part of it. The world of the 1st century was very much tied into an awareness that there was a spirit world, and a lot different than even we today, we see a spirit world today in media and entertainment form. And they're seeing that, and it's the final time. But Jesus immediately said to them: 'Take courage! I wonder if more people came to Jerusalem for Pentecost in that year because of what had happened 50 days earlier, plus three, and they had heard about that. Not only apostles, but even the prophets of the Old Testament, who are lower than apostles, had a degree of presence of Spirit in themselves, through Whom they prophesied (needn't to give references, for they are so numerous!). They need to see within us, Jesus Christ. Then Jesus told them plainly, "Lazarus has died .John 4:11-14 Come on. But they were terrified, and frightened, and supposed they had seen a spirit." Go, therefore, make disciples of nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded, and lo, I am with you, always, even to the end of the age.'" How was Simeon able to have the Holy Spirit upon him prior to Pentecost? And He opened their understanding that they might comprehend the Scriptures.". The Feast of Pentecost, or Shavuot in Hebrew, was just starting in Jerusalem as the book of Acts begins. What we are seeing here is again, the power of the Word of God. Why are you standing around gazing? They were kind of like this, and like this. We get on to verse 40, the wrap-up: "With many other words, he testified and exhorted them saying, Be saved from this perverse generation, that those who were, who gladly received his word were baptized; about 3,000 souls were added to them. Such notions have always struck me as profoundly atheistic. Before that the Holy Spirit came on people for specific gifts and purposes. And then even when we see in the days after Jesus' final ascension, a roughly 10-day period, when they came to make a decision to replace Judas, they read Scripture, they applied it properly, God blessed the decision. 1 Samuel 11:6 When Saul heard their words, the Spirit of God came powerfully upon him, and he burned with anger. Prior to Pentecost, the Apostles and disciples gathered in fear, behind locked doors. Well, that's a sign that I should go here, take this job, do this or do that. But miracles, well, that just takes a little bit more work, but they were here in the midst of a very large miracle. The story does not indicate that they were still in that upper room in Acts 2. The last holy day season, the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread had seen the death of Jesus Christ, and then three days later He was resurrected and He had appeared to them. Jesus was enveloped within a pillar of fire, but was not harmed. 157 views, 3 likes, 4 loves, 3 comments, 2 shares, Facebook Watch Videos from Mora Grace Lutheran Church: Music used with permission from CCLI As we have received the gift of God's Spirit, as those on that first day of Pentecost received the gift of the Holy Spirit were brought into the Church, they became, and so are we, partakers of the divine nature. Before or after this instance. And again, He gives, through Mark's account here, He gives the same commission to go. So the Word of God is what Jesus took and explained, it is what the Church went to, to explain what was happening, and then, it is the Spirit of God. That's a little-understood part of what was taking place. "Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God" (1 Corinthians 10:31). When the disciples saw the Lord, they became very happy. When they heard that He was alive and had been seen by her, they did not believe. An eyewitness account, there was a lack of belief that put them in the situation here that they did not understand and didn't believe that had actually happened. 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. Some say that they wound up in the temple precincts; could very well be. The disciples had seen Jesus reach out across ethnic and religious divides birth in His parables and in real life. Zechariah's prophecy in chapter 14 shows that Christ will, on that day, set foot on the Mount of Olives. About 10 days earlier, Christ had finally ascended for the final time and they were left alone. Hagiographical sources also portray saints as those able to withstand the fear or deceit brought . Psalm 139:710 says, "Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? and there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them. And let's look at it beginning in verse 36, this is after His resurrection, "As they said these things," this is the two that He had appeared to on the road to Emmaus, "Jesus himself stood in the midst of them and said to them, 'Peace to you.' From the sorrow of the Cross to the glory of Resurrection. He went on to show that, "It's not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father has put in His own authority, but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. Surely we have need today of men and women filled by the Spirit to expose and denounce evils in our society that are hardly blinked at any more: the exploitation of women's bodies and debasement in advertising, the unconscionable destruction of human life through abortion on demand, the maneuvers of our own country to destabilize other governments, the gross waste and gluttony of American life, the cavalier attitude to divorce and remarriage which God hates, and the multi-million dollar promotion of alcohol and cigarettes as anything less than family-destroyers and body-killers. I've got to find out where that next bus leaves, and what time." 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. Suddenly, Jesus appeared in the middle of the group. And so Luke's account brings this together. When people are filled with the Holy Spirit, they do not blink at evil. But on the morning that those disciples were gathered there, before it happened, you have to imagine that they had no idea that, that would be what would take place. Christ in you, the hope of glory. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. If we can learn to take on the divine nature and drink that in, in our lives, then we can banish doubt, uncertainty, and fear, unbelief, that will creep in at various times as we go through our lives, and stages in the developments of life. That's how I imagine it and He was home, He was back at, He was at the third heaven. That they're not drunk, that this is of God. 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." Beginning with Easter Sunday (e.g., Luke 24:32,45) and most likely throughout the forty days before ascending, the Lord instructed and formed the Apostles in the Gospel. Finally, please know the disciples did receive the Spirit when Jesus breathed on them BEFORE Pentecost (Jn. Two things we can summarize to show what was the key to bring about this scene that we see here at the end of chapter 2 in Acts. Pre-Feast of the Origin of the Fair Trees of the Life-Creating Cross of the Lord. Yet until the spirit was poured out at Pentecost, the disciples were a homogenous bunch. The Spirit gives that courage. And you can begin to imagine how this dynamic begins to must have been being set up within the disciples, because when you begin to doubt one another, you begin to lose trust. For example, Numbers 14:24 says of Caleb, "My servant Caleb, because he has a different Spirit and has followed me fully, I will bring into this land." (1 Cor., 148 pp., XI, 8-22). Luke 24:49 I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high. The country folk downstream depended on it. So He begins to teach them from the Scriptures that they might understand, and that they might comprehend what He was and how He had fulfilled everything that they would have understood to one degree, and then even more they had begun to develop a fuller understanding of the prophecies of Isaiah, or Joel, or Jeremiah, or Ezekiel, the statements about the Messiah. Let's go into Luke's account. 3. The disciples had seen what would happen because Christ was arrested and had come before the high priest. Instead, they turned the world upside down. During the long period of construction the Nile River wasn't completely stopped. So, as Jesus Christ was teaching His disciples to focus on the things pertaining to the Kingdom of God during the time between His resurrection and Pentecost, we can be focusing on that now too. "Let all things be done for edification" (1 Corinthians 14:26). And the people of God in this period are to be a people born of the Spirit, baptized in the Spirit, filled with the Spirit, empowered by the Spirit to bear witness to "the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ." Most people believe the disciples were assembled in the "upper room" when the holy spirit of YEHOVAH God descended upon them during that Pentecost of 31 A.D. 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. 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what were the disciples afraid of before pentecost