Note: Transcriptions are done by software. Errors may occur.
Power For The Process | David Fisher
Okay, man it’s good to see y’all this morning, good to have you. Last week we were talking about who are you, and it was really talking about John the Baptist and them asking him who are you, he knew exactly who he was. So today we’re going to talk about the resurrection and what happened after the resurrection.
After that resurrection Jesus was around his disciples, the scriptures say, for 40 days describing infallible proofs that he in fact had risen from the grave. If you got your Bible, turn to the first chapter of Acts. And so first chapter of Acts is where we’re going to start today.
And in these 40 days, these 40 days Jesus is, he’s eating with them, he’s talking with them, he’s proving that he wasn’t just a spirit, he was actually, had a resurrected body. And they were to be his witnesses, but they didn’t really know what to do because he’s about to leave physically from the earth, and he’s promised and he’s talked about how the Spirit’s going to come and he’s going to baptize them with the Holy Spirit. So let’s look here in chapter 1, verse 4. And so Jesus gets all of his disciples together and he says, he assembled together with them and he commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which we all know is, was the Holy Spirit.
And so he, Luke records here in the book of Acts, he says, he says, which you’ve heard from me for John truly baptized with water, and that was the baptism of repentance from sins, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. Well, it turned out they didn’t know when that day would be, but they stayed there. They stayed there in Jerusalem waiting just exactly how Jesus told them to do.
And so they go and they gather and they’re praying together and they’re meeting together. And then over in, in verse, verse 8, Jesus has given them some more explanation before he leaves. He says, but you shall receive power, you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you shall be my witnesses to me, you’re going to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, right where we are, in Judea, the country, and then in Samaria, the further countries outside and to the end of the earth.
See they’ve been living with him for three years. They’ve had his example right there with them and now they’re going to be, they think in a sense being left alone, but Jesus had already promised them you will not be left alone because I’m going to send the power, the promise of the Father, the Holy Spirit to be in you and to be with you and to fill you. And 10 days later is what we call Pentecost.
It was seven weeks after Passover and it’s a festival. It’s the festival of the first fruits of the wheat harvest. We lose a lot of the significance of, of, of these Jewish festivals and the, and the surroundings of how they, they lived.
So it’s important sometime to understand this was a, the next festival, it was the second festival that all the Jewish men were commanded to come to Jerusalem and we know it as Pentecost. And Jesus says, as we know, poured out, Peter explains it later after the Holy Spirit descended and fell upon the disciples who were in the upper room, 120 persons who went out preaching and speaking in other tongues and people who heard it in their own languages from all over the world, talking about the wonderful, the wonderful works of God. And then Peter is explaining, he says, this is exactly what Jesus says was going to be poured out upon you.
This is exactly what he promised and it’s been poured out. This what’s, this what’s been poured out. You see it and you hear it and it was real to them.
It was something new to them and their experience. I’d like to take us back a little bit to the prophecy made by John the Baptist over in Luke three. So if you have your Bible, go to the Luke three, we’re going to start in verse 15.
That puts a little context to understand what, what was being, had been prepared for these full three years where Jesus had been ministering. This is, so this is back before Jesus is even engaged in his ministry. John the Baptist gives a prophecy about what Jesus is going to do.
Verse 15, he says, now as the people were in expectation, because he’s been preaching to them and talking to them and they all reasoned in their hearts about John, whether he was the Christ or not. John answered and told them, he says, I baptize you with water, but one is mightier than I who is coming, whose sandal strap I’m not even worthy to loose. He will baptize you with what? The Holy Spirit.
And what? And fire. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire and his winnowing fan is in his hand and he will thoroughly clean out his threshing floor and gather wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. Those illustrations of the chaff being burned are used in other situations in the Bible where they’re talking about separating the evil people from the righteous people, but that’s not what’s being discussed here.
God’s talking about a different type of purification of his people. As he says here, you will be baptized. I mean a lot of commentaries say this is talking about the judgment at the end of time.
I don’t believe that’s what he’s talking about. He’s talking about something different because the judgment of fire would be on those who were evil and who were not followers of Christ, right? But here he’s saying you, you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit and with fire and that Jesus, this one who’s coming after me has the winnowing fan. We lose the context of this I think so many times because in the society that we live, how many of y’all are wheat farmers? Any wheat farmers out here? Y’all may have some tomatoes and if there’s anybody got a good garden, I know Shane’s got a good garden, but even he doesn’t have a bunch of wheat, do you? Tomatoes and potatoes and greens and all that good stuff, but we’re not wheat growing people.
We get wheat in a cereal or in bread, right? It’s already been refined, it’s been purified, but they understood exactly what it meant. Pentecost was dealing with harvest. The Holy Spirit came on the day of the first fruits of the harvest and Christian churches talk about the harvest all the time, of just the reaping of souls, the bringing of souls, but I’m going to tell you the harvest process is just the beginning.
You know where they take the sickle and they cut it low on the stalks and they gather it and put it in bundles and they put it, those bundles are called sheaves and y’all remember the old song, bringing in, y’all know that song? Can you sing it? Yeah. We could come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves. That’s right, y’all.
Y’all remember that good old song? It’s from Psalms 126 about bringing in the sheaves. You did great, you did great. Bringing in the sheaves, it comes to that harvest time, so that’s just the start.
This is one of my concerns is I believe in baptism. We preach baptism here in this church, don’t we? And we have baptisms, but I’m going to tell you baptism for the remission of your sins is just the start of the process. One of my big concerns that there are people sometimes who say, well, I want to be baptized and so they get baptized and we honor that request and then they don’t grow anymore.
I think it’s all done. I’m going to tell you being baptized is not the goal. Is it? It’s not the goal, it’s the start.
It’s the start of that harvest. It’s preparing the way for the Lord. The work of the Lord is still to be done after the harvest begins.
And so I want to just kind of make sure y’all understand, you know, we have the parable of the sower where Jesus talks about sowing the seed and there’s some that grows and some that doesn’t grow. But we’re talking about harvest that’s grown, I mean, harvest that’s grown. You don’t harvest seed that didn’t grow, do you? You harvesting the seed that has grown into these tall stalks, stalks, S-T-A-L-K-S, stalks, pardon my East Texas dialect, but the stalks grow and they cut it and they gather it.
And that’s just the beginning of the process. How many of y’all have just gotten a stalk of grain and started eating it? I haven’t. I’ve done that with some rice out in the goose field before and you just do that with rice.
You wouldn’t ever do that. Why? It’s because it’s got a husk around it. It’s got this hard, tough covering on it.
We got the slide of some of the wheat. Y’all seen this before. It grows tall and grows high and has the head of the stalk and it’s grassy and it’s hard and it’s tough, I mean, real tough.
My mama used to make whole wheat bread. It was the worst thing in the world. It was like a brick, sourdough, wheat, whole wheat bread.
And when I was in high school, she decided that we weren’t going to eat white bread anymore and I was going to eat peanut butter and jelly on whole wheat bread. It was horrible. I was old enough and I had a little job and made a little money.
In fact, I went to the store and bought my own loaf of white bread and I kept it in my closet. And she wouldn’t even buy a Roman meal bread. I mean, she wouldn’t even buy something halfway.
And all my sisters wanted, I said, no, this is my bread, this is my bread. And so, and after a few weeks, she gave up because all the kids rebelled. I’m sorry I got off on that track, but whole wheat, whole, you never, whole wheat’s tough.
It’s got this brand, it’s just as tough. But those are the kernels of the wheat. And the harvest starts.
John the Baptist is talking about the winnowing fan. I want us to make sure we understand the context of what all has been going on. And so, when they harvest the wheat, they gather the wheat, they bring in the sheaves, come in a rejoicing, and they get these sheaves and they put it on what’s called the threshing floor.
We’ll go to that next slide. The threshing floor is just a bunch of oxen trampling on the sheaves. That’s how it starts.
And so, they get their sheaves, they unbundle them and they put them on this hard, hard surface, usually in a circle, and they get oxen who carry this, who drag this big piece of wood behind them, and those oxen go round, next slide, they go round and around and they trample on the wheat. And they do it all day. And it starts with this big mound, like a big, giant mound of straw.
And by the time they’re through, it’s just all mashed up. And you got one of the workers, if not some of the workers, who have what’s called a winnowing fork. It’s a long stick that’s got prongs on the end.
And while the oxen are going round and around with their cloven hooves, separated hooves, and they’re just trampling, they’re just going in circles, they’re just stepping on the wheat, stepping on the wheat, stepping on the wheat, stepping on the wheat, and the wheat just starts getting mashed down and smushed. And they get those winnowing forks and they throw it up in the air and start getting rid of the straw, called winnowing. This scripture, this translation, both the King James and the New King James say it’s a winnowing fan.
Other translations talk about the winnowing fork, so two separate instruments. So after they’ve done the winnowing with the fork, they get rid of the straw and they throw it off to the side, and that’s leaving some of the smaller pieces there in the circle after the oxen have trampled and threshed it on the threshing floor. They get a basket they call winnowing fan.
It’s like a scoop, it’s just kind of a basket, and they get it and they throw it up in the air. And if they throw it up in the air, the wind blows away the little chaff and the grassy part, the part that you wouldn’t want to eat. What falls down are the seeds, and they keep doing it, and then they refine it and start rubbing it all off, and as they’re doing it, they’re sifting it, they’re throwing it up in the air, and the good kernels land back in the basket and all the chaff blows away.
They take that chaff and they burn it because it’s not good for anything, it’s not good for anything. And what do you have left? Kernels of wheat. And what do you need if you’re going to be planting? Kernels of wheat.
And what are you going to need if you’re going to bake bread and make bread, you’re going to grind bread, all you want is wheat, you don’t want any chaff in it, right? No chaff, no chaff. To be useful and productive, the people who are doing this work on the threshing floor are eventually getting it down to kernels of wheat that can be used for planting and for making bread. That’s the threshing floor.
They said Jesus is already there with the winnowing fan, he’s ready to start doing the refining and the processing of those who have been harvested. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I feel like I’m just spending a lot of time on the threshing floor. Threshing is kind of violent if you’re the kernel of wheat because it’s getting mashed, it’s getting smashed, it’s getting torn, it’s getting sifted and thrown up in the air.
Sometimes we think, what on earth is happening to us? I’m going to tell you, we’re on the threshing floor. You ever been there? It always used to puzzle me in the first chapter of James, it said, consider it all joy, my friends, when you experience, what, trials and tribulations. You know, because the truth is you’re on the threshing floor.
See, God doesn’t want to leave you as a stalk that’s not useful. He doesn’t want to leave you as out in the field where you’ve been cut down but left out in the field for gleaners to come, or for birds to get, or for animals to eat. You are precious to him, but the harvest, the cutting down, the beginning of the harvest process is just the beginning.
It’s this threshing floor that’s so important for us because that’s the work of the Holy Spirit. You know, when Jesus was about to be, to leave his disciples, he told his, he told Peter, he says, Peter, Satan has asked for permission to sift you like wheat. And so sometimes we think that if bad things are happening in our life, that it all must be the devil.
But I’m going to tell you, the devil cannot do what God does not give him permission to do. You understand, the Holy Spirit is in control of that sifting. The Holy Spirit is in control of that threshing.
The Holy Spirit knows where we need to be threshed. People say, you know, well, but I, that’s how I grew up. Well, the wheat grew up with chaff on it too.
That’s how the wheat grows up. It grows up with chaff on it and straw on it. And God says, that’s not how I want you to stay.
Don’t stay how you grew up. I want you to change. And you know what? Circumstances in, in, in oxen are going to be in your life that are going to start threshing you, treading you on the threshing floor.
Because Jesus wants to take all of that, that has grown up around you and has been, made you hard, that has made you unuseful, and he wants to burn it out of your life. Y’all want to be more pure? To be more separated, to be more useful to God, then we need not to despise the threshing floor. Man, it hurts.
Doesn’t it? I think it’s so interesting that the threshing floor is talked about several times in the Old Testament. Over in, in, in Chronicles, it says that Solomon built the temple on a piece of land where David had set up an altar on Mount Moriah. And it also says it was the threshing floor that David bought from a Jebusite named Ornan.
The temple of God was built on a threshing floor. It’s where heaven and earth meet. Where God works with you and deals with you is on the threshing floor.
You will never be closer to God than when you are on the threshing floor. Because you’re saying, God, I need you, I need your help, what is going on here? The temple of God is built on the threshing floor. It takes you back to when David, David had made a horrible mistake.
We think of the sin with Bathsheba as his big mistake. His big mistake is when he asked for all the people to be counted. And because of that, God said, there’s going to be one of three things going to happen to you and you pick it.
He said, I’d rather not fall into what men may do to me, I’m going to put myself at your mercy. And an angel killed 70,000 people with a plague that day. And he looked up in Jerusalem and he saw an angel standing there near the threshing floor of Ornan.
And he bought that threshing floor and he made an altar there. The threshing floor is where we worship God and we say, God, I have no other place to turn but to you. It’s the threshing floor and God is there, Jesus is there with his winnowing fan to take us and to purify us in that moment when we think things are all smashed to bits, becomes the threshing floor.
You remember Gideon? Gideon had an angel come and reveal himself to him before he helped deliver the Israelite people. And where did that happen? On a threshing floor. I don’t think that that’s a coincidence, do you? It’s the threshing floor.
The Holy Spirit does not just come and give us power to be witnesses. The Holy Spirit comes with the fire and with the purification that makes us usable. He is the power.
He is the power for the process of our refinement to be used and to be usable by God. I know what it feels like to be shaken and what it feels like to be tossed, do you? I know you do. I know you do.
But our first inclination always is to blame the devil, blame somebody else. I’m going to tell you, God’s in charge of the threshing floor. And he wants to take us and he wants to remove from us all the chaff in our life, all the things that we’ve allowed to build up that have created a hardness in our hearts.
I want you to understand that baptism with water and the repentance that we have is just the first step. If we’re truly going to be people immersed in the Holy Spirit, baptism was immersing them in the Holy Spirit. Jesus says, I’m going to pour out the Spirit because it’s the promise of my Father, but you will be baptized, you will be immersed in the Holy Spirit.
And because you start, you begin to be immersed, you begin to be filled with the Holy Spirit. And when they would begin to speak, every time it said Peter would speak, he said, Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit. It wasn’t just the Holy Spirit was out and around them, it was in them.
And when our actions start showing that we are speaking, we are speaking with the words of the Holy Spirit, it comes because we’ve been filled with the Holy Spirit. And when we act in ways that don’t make any sense to people, and they say, I don’t understand how you can love that person who’s just hurt you, you say, because it’s the power of the Holy Spirit for the process. The Holy Spirit gives us the power to be sustained, to be sustained in this time of the threshing floor.
And how do I get it? Well, Jesus just says you ask for it. If you got your Bible, turn, flip back over, I guess now to Luke 11, Luke 11, I mean, Jesus didn’t leave us alone. He left and poured out the Spirit for as many as God will call, that includes us.
The Holy Spirit’s for you. The Holy Spirit’s for us. Luke 11 verse 9, he’s talking about the Holy Spirit here.
He says, I say to you, ask, and it’s going to be given to you. Ask for the Holy Spirit. Ask for it.
You feel like you’re in the threshing floor and you’re just being beat up by the devil. You say, God, I need your Holy Spirit to be right here with me. The truth is, he’s there with you, but you need to know it.
Ask and it’ll be given. Seek and you’ll find. Knock and it will be opened to you.
All these good gifts that a father knows how to give his children, the father wants to give you the gift of the Holy Spirit. It doesn’t stop with baptism. It continues with the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Turn now over to verse 13. It says, if you then be an evil, meaning, you know, you’re not a completely righteous. You know how to give your kids good stuff.
He says, you know how to give good gifts to your children. How much more will your heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? Ask him. Ask him.
There doesn’t have to be some fancy, special, secret, mysterious handshake or special oil that we put on you or some special ceremony that you go through. That’s between you and God. Just ask him.
Ask him to fill you and to use you and to help you through this threshing process. I don’t, you know, sometime when we know people who are going through hard times, going through hard times, we, we rush in and we try to help them and give them the comfort, but sometime we’re cutting their legs off because what we ought to be saying is, we’re coming here to help you, but asking together with you that the Holy Spirit will minister to you and to give you power and strength through this process. Sometime we give our friends bad advice.
We just say, oh, the devil, look what the devil’s doing. I don’t want to give any credit to the devil. The devil is not in charge of my threshing floor any more than the devil is in charge of your threshing floor.
The devil has to ask for permission to everything that he does and if it has been allowed to happen, God in his infinite wisdom is allowing it in our, on our threshing floor for a purpose because there’s some hardness about me. There’s some shell around me that’s got to be removed because Jesus has the winnowing fan and he’s trying to blow it away and it won’t blow away just because you wave it. It blows away because of the friction, because of the rubbing, because of the trial, because of the tribulation and the chaff begins to pull off the kernel and then the wind, the wind of the Holy Spirit, the wind of the Holy Spirit removes it from us forever and Jesus burns it up and it’s all gone.
Isn’t that what we want to be? I’ve been excited about this week because I believe, I believe, I believe, I know that so many of you have been going through horrible circumstances, trials and tribulations and health problems and things that are, that are just bad news, whether it’s family members or whether it’s your own body. I know that and I know how painful that can be. But I want us on Pentecost Sunday to realize that you are part of the first fruits of the harvest of Jesus Christ and they have saved, he saved your soul and he will not leave you in the field.
He’s gathering you and he’s allowing you, he’s allowing you to be tested and pushed and go through these pains so that we can become more refined and be used by him. And don’t you want to be used by Jesus? And that’s what I want most of all, just to be used, just to be used by you. I want us to do our, this a little bit different today.
I’d like y’all to stand. And I want the people who just know that they have been on the threshing floor. See, the ox isn’t always standing on you.
It kind of goes in circles, okay, just sometimes comes around. And these clove, they have got cloven hooves, separated hooves, if you ever look at a, different than a horse. A horse has one solid hoof.
Oxen has cloven. And isn’t it interesting when the Holy Spirit came and descended on the disciples, they had cloven tongues of fire? I think that’s the threshing floor. The threshing floor was started.
And as these cloven, the cloven hooves are different. They don’t smash the kernel. It’s not going to smash the kernel.
It’s just going to get rid of the chaff. And I’m going to tell you, a lot of you feel like you’re getting smashed and you’re getting hurt and you’ve got pains and you’ve got discomforts. You’ve got trials and tribulations.
And if you’re in that moment right now, I’m going to ask you to come forward so that we can pray for you as a body of believers. If you are on the threshing floor and you know, you know you’re going through it and it hurts and it hurts and it is painful, I know that it’s painful. I think it’s important for us to come as a body of believers because I’m going to ask, I’m going to ask all, all those, all those of you who feel like you’re just being trampled and you’re being stepped on and you’re being harassed by, you think it’s all by the devil, but God’s somehow given permission.
I can remember as a young believer, how much that upset me, God, why would you let the devil do that? And it comes down to what God’s will is and what God’s going to be doing in your life. And he must know that there’s some chaff that needs to be torn off me. He knew it.
Y’all come on. Y’all come on up, line up all the way up here because I want the elders and the prayer partners to come up behind them and pray for them and do this. I just want y’all to have somebody who’s praying with you, somebody who’s up behind you.
And if you see somebody who doesn’t have a hand on their shoulder, I’m going to ask you to come up behind them and just to pray for them because the threshing floor is a painful place to be. It’s a hurtful place to be. And I’m going to ask you to start praying for them.
This is what a body of believers do. If you’re out in the audience and you just stretch out your hands and say, Father, I’m going to pray for my brothers and my sisters because they’re going through experiences that I’m not made to be experiencing right now, but I’ve felt it before and I’ve known it before and I’m praying for their, I’m praying for their relief. Father, we come to you in the mighty name of Jesus.
We lift up our brothers and our sisters who are, who are spending this time on the threshing floor. Father, I know how hurtful it can be and how painful it can be, but Father, you and the power of your Holy Spirit is in charge of this threshing hold. We are your temple and this temple we know is built on the threshing floor.
But Father, I pray that you will bring ministry and comfort to us. And I’m praying that each person who’s going through this time of threshing, that they would ask you, that they would be asking you right now for the presence of your Holy Spirit to strengthen them and to empower them. Father, to give them hope.
Father, give them hope. Father, as we yield ourselves to your threshing floor, I pray that your spirit would not only just give us, to teach us, but Father, give us the power to endure. We know that it brings endurance.
I pray that your spirit will fill us, will touch us, will touch each and every person who’s come with a boldness and with, with confidence and not ashamed to stand here before you to say, Father, I need you and I need the promise of your spirit to fill me, to be poured out upon me, pour your spirit out upon us, Father, and to baptize us in the power of your Holy Spirit. Father, I pray that you will fill us. We will be so submerged in the power of your spirit that we will be changed altogether from the top of our head to the bottom of our feet.
Father, you will change us into the image of Christ, to look like Christ, to speak like Christ, to act like Christ. Father, I know there is going to be a time of great resurrection. And you will wipe away every tear from our eyes, but Father, while we’re here on this earth, I pray that you will strengthen us and give us power.
You will speedily remove the chaff that we allow to build up in our lives, the things we’ve grown up with that are holding us back, the things that we’ve grown up with that it’s so hard to let go of, but Father, I believe that your spirit is merciful and kind and just, and that you will do a good work, because we are your harvest. We are your harvest, and you are a good God, and we give you all the honor and all the glory and all the power belongs to you. It’s in your Son, Jesus’ name we pray, amen.