Sunday Morning Worship Service

well lord bless you i'm gonna let you move back to your seats and for a season i'll let you be seated we greet you in the precious name of jesus we welcome you to the sunday morning worship service of first apostolic church so wonderful to see every one of you back in the house of the lord and let me say on behalf of uh sister jamie and myself we are glad to be back at first apostolic church on this sunday morning we had the privilege of preaching an anniversary service a celebration sunday morning sunday night with all the saints over in sanford north carolina last sunday but there's no place like being home here at first apostolic church so good to be back with you i i want to give honor to pastor nate whitley and pastor anthony mccool what a marvelous job of ministering preaching they did last weekend give the lord a great big hand for their ministry and i also say uh happy birthday to both of them this week friday and saturday back to back i uh getting older y'all gonna catch up with me if i'll just slow down a little bit uh happy birthday to you and then i want to say a special welcome to all of the guests that we have here at first apostolic church uh i have one guest card i want to uh welcome linda ham this is an associate brother jason of linda we're honored to have you could we welcome linda today lord bless you and any other guests that we have here if i did not get a guest card from you just the same we say welcome and thank you for worshiping with us today is designated in our movement and among many of the uh uh denominations if you will in our nation in particular and even around the world as pentecost sunday and there's a lot of celebrating goes on on pentecost sunday but brother anthony and i we were talking about that we celebrate pentecost sunday every sunday because we're experiencing what they did on the day of pentecost and i'm excited to celebrate pentecost sunday this sunday and every sunday in our lifestyle and in the movement that god has blessed us to be a part of i'm thankful for the power of the holy ghost that fell on the day of pentecost that is still working and operating in all of our lives today i want to take you to the word of the lord this morning if you would turn with me i'm going to just let you stay in your seats at this time but that's a courtesy and not a command anytime you feel like worshiping that's in order here exodus the 14th chapter i would ask you to turn there exodus the 14th chapter we're going to begin reading at verse number eight exodus 14 we'll read it verse number eight and the lord hardened the heart of pharaoh king of egypt and he pursued him after the children of israel and the children of israel went out with a high hand but the egyptians pursued after them all the horses and chariots of pharaoh and his horsemen and his army and overtook them in camping by the sea beside fija hereth and bel zephron and when pharaoh drew nigh the children of israel lifted up their eyes and behold the egyptians marched after them and they were so afraid and the children of israel cried unto the lord and they said unto moses because there were no graves in egypt hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness wherefore hast thou dealt thus with us to carry us forth out of egypt is not this the word that we did tell thee in egypt saying let us alone that we may serve the egyptians for it had been better for us to serve the egyptians than that we should die in the wilderness notice verse 13 and moses said unto the people fear ye not stand still everybody say stand still and see the salvation of the lord which he will show to you today for the egyptians whom you have seen today ye shall see them again no more forever and the lord shall fight for you and ye shall hold your peace for a few moments this morning i would speak to you on this subject what should i do when life comes to a standstill what should i do when life comes to a standstill let's pray savior we love you god i'm grateful to be in your house i thank you for the praise that have gone up and the blessings that have come down this morning lord we thank you for your presence that's so near i pray that you would anoint my lips that i would speak as your mouthpiece let your word go deep into our hearts lord let us never be afraid and ashamed to receive what you have for us and to act upon it lord we're grateful and thankful for this opportunity in the name of jesus we pray amen [Music] as summer is arising and we are once again becoming the mobile society that we once were before the pandemic one of the most dreaded annoyances of life at least to me i won't include you in it but you'll see if you agree with me one of the most dreaded annoyances of life is a traffic jam on the interstate most of us have indeed experienced the interruption of a trip but suddenly several lanes of traffic stop dead still trip was going so smoothly we men in particular we we like to be able to brag about we made such good time on this trip we left it such and such and so and so time and man i drove it in this amenity i did so good you've been making such good time the sun is shining bright it's a beautiful day you already have plans when you arrive at your destination and you're gaining a little extra time you're getting just a little extra vacation because you're going to get there early and then it happens all lanes are stopped dead your trip now is interrupted what even makes it worse you had intended on having a restroom stop and a refreshment break at the very next exit can i get a witness now suddenly there's no possibility of exiting no way to turn around or to back up and you certainly can't proceed blowing your horn won't help cursing the situation won't solve it you're just stuck stopped still nothing's moving well except for the traffic going the opposite direction and you know in your heart they're all either saying or thinking i'm glad i'm not going that way that's an annoyance of life that i don't even like to think about it but it happens and it's going to happen again but let me tell you far more difficult and frustrating than a traffic jam is when your life seems to come to a standstill your life seemed to be going so smoothly you finally got everything together it seems that the bills are paid the kids are taken care of all's well your job's doing fine and then the boom suddenly an issue comes up some tragedy or some difficulty some trial immediately stops progress in its tracks in your life a layoff at work a bad or troubling report from your health care provider a disappointment in a trusted friend you fill in the blank but there's a lot of things that suddenly stop life dead still before you panic before you think that all is lost and all is hopeless i've got news for you god sometimes allows your life to come to a standstill now remember our text said that god hardened pharaoh's heart it was god who had been working and had allowed for the children of israel to leave egypt but now god had been orchestrating things all the time and he hardened pharaoh's heart and pharaoh began pursuing pharaoh and his army were pursuing god's people who had exited egypt and suddenly they find themselves trapped nowhere to go the sea in front of them pharaoh's army behind any have been to sunday school you know the details of this story but let's talk about a little bit what should we do when life comes to a standstill why would god allow something like that to happen maybe it's you haven't been listening to god close enough when you were on the move maybe things have been going so smoothly that you've stopped listening to what god had to say to you numbers 9 and 8 says and moses said unto them stand still and i will hear what the lord will command concerning you did you know sometimes when life gets to going too smooth and we get to going too great we stop listening to voices of authority that should still be speaking into our lives man when there was trouble when we were in bondage when egypt was pursuing us egypt was beating us up with its whips we would listen to what the leadership said but suddenly we've got our freedom things are going smooth everything's going great suddenly i don't need a preacher speaking into my life anymore i don't need teaching i don't need wisdom i don't need wise instruction i've got it figured out sometimes god has to say break lights stop you haven't been listening you haven't been listening to what god has i've got news for you i'm not magnifying me but i do magnify my office and every man of god every woman of god who instructs and teaches sometimes god gives them something he commands something for you through them he said stand still and i will hear moses said i'm going to hear what the lord has concerning you sometimes what the lord has to tell us isn't always easy to hear and if we could move we would move away from it lord things are going too good i don't need to hear that stuff preacher don't tell me about that i've been making it i've been on the move i i've been above the speed limit i've had my pedal to the metal if you will sometimes god has to say stop i'm needing you to hear something it may be that we've been moving so fast that the lord's commands for us have not been heeded and maybe we've become unreasonable and the lord is needing us to reason some things out first samuel 12 7 said now therefore stand still that i might reason with you before the lord of all the righteous acts of the lord which he did to you and to your fathers reason out the blessings from your past before you forget what god has done for you before you forget what he has made arrangements for you to be moving in your life feel like you're moving sometimes we need to have a good spiritual history lesson to remember what god is to where we are before we get to thinking we're all that in a bag of chips as they say before you get to thinking you're handier than a shirt pocket you might better remember where you came from where you were what god has brought you from sometimes we need to stand still and hear a little history lesson we can get a little too struck on ourselves spiritually we can get to thinking man i've done so much for god i've blessed him so much look how i'm moving sometimes he says be still i need to remind you where you were i want to remind you how faithful you were when you didn't have as much as you've got right now reason out the blessings he said in that passage in first samuel 12 7 he said therefore stand still that i may reason with you before the lord of the righteous acts of the lord which he did to you and to your fathers if we aren't careful we'll forget the blessings and the sacrifices of a previous generation that brought us to where we are now i've said it before but i'll state it again we are a multi-generational church and if we aren't careful we'll forget the sacrifices that were made for us to be where we are now it hasn't always been like it is now god has honored the efforts of folks from other generations from past generations to allow us to have the privileges and the opportunities to minister that god has given us next weekend will be memorial day weekend we should always pause and be reminded of those who have sacrificed for us to have the freedoms that we have today we must never forget that do you hear me we sometimes go ahead and give the lord a great big hand we must remember the sacrifices that have brought us to where we are reason out the blessings of the past reasoning out what god has done for us let him make you stand still sometimes and review history you know maybe we've been moving so fast that we've stopped considering how wonderful things are for us man if i was going to preach that to anybody i could just preach that to all we who live in east tennessee i'm so thankful to live where we live and to have what god has given us job said this job 37 14 hearken unto this o job stand still and consider the wondrous works of god look around us look i mean we can walk out the front door and look in about any direction we can see the beautiful the beautiful majestic mountains that god created i'm amazed to watch the life patterns of we citizens of the united states all we folks who live here in the beauty of the mountains if we get a little time off you know what we do we try to head to where the beach is and when vacation time comes you know where a lot of the license plates are that are in the mountains they're from folks in florida that live where the beaches are because sometimes we just forget how wonderful it is the things that god has done for us we forget the beauty we take for great look i didn't even worry this morning when i got up whether the sun was going to come up i knew god had it in control i knew he sometimes we have to stand still and say god i just want to thank you for all you've done for all the blessings you've provided for me the beauty that's around me the opportunities ah hear me this is pentecost sunday we better be thankful for all he's done for us all he's provided for us god i thank you for my family i thank you for my children i thank you for my church i thank you for my community is it perfect no but god i know you're in charge and if i'll keep serving you i'm gonna stand still a little while and just look what you've done look what god has done the psalmist said it this way in psalms 1 39-14 i will praise thee for i am fearfully and wonderfully made god made me don't try to give me some idea that i've evolved into this creature god made me what i am all the all the intricacies of humanity oh look mankind we're still trying we're we're trying to mimic and improve on what god has created but let me tell you have you all seen the best efforts yet of mankind to create robots they are so awkward i saw a robot dog here a while back i don't know the purpose of having a robot dog maybe it's in case you've got robot cats i don't know but somebody been working on a robot dog i got news for you i won't want to cuddle up with it it could fetch when there was a man over there pushing the buttons oh but mccool do you not know how how quickly all these computers and these ipads and do you not know how quick they can process yeah i do somebody still got to push the buttons we are fearfully and wonderfully made we need to sometimes stop and stand still and realize what an amazing thing god has created when he created us the uniqueness of us why because every one of us are his creation and he knows us and loves us and cares about us sometimes i need to just stand still and realize i've been fearfully and wonderfully made i'm part of this grand plan that god has and he knows me individually because you see i've got good news if your life seems like it's been in a standstill don't panic for i find in scripture that a stand still usually comes right before salvation victory if i take us back to our text please notice what had happened i won't read it all but at verse 8 pharaoh's heart had been heartened the egyptians were pursuing in verse nine pharaoh was getting close in verse 10 and the people of god did what most humanity does they started looking for somebody to blame they said moses were there no graves in egypt you see when life comes to a standstill if you're not careful you'll have a skewed view of how bad sin was you'll forget how bad egypt really was when you were living in sin you'll start blaming the immediate leadership god's leadership god why did you bring me here moses why did you lead us here weren't there any graves i could have suffered like this in egypt listen god allows some things to come to a standstill because he's just about to bring a victory into your life he's just about to do something that you weren't expecting you might have been moving too fast you were going to blow right by what god had for you they said weren't there enough graves in egypt wouldn't be we have been better to be in bondage there's some folks nowadays will get that kind of logic when they have a little trouble i mean they've been delivered from addiction they've been delivered from a broken home they've been delivered from abuse and they'll start serving god and there'll be one little bump in the road and saying well man i'm just going back to egypt listen if your lives come to a standstill now is no time to look for a trip back to egypt you ought to be saying god i'm going to stand still i know you're about to do something in my life you're about to do a miracle in my life something's about to happen they said moses don't you remember we said leave us alone we would have just loved to stay and serve the egyptians and moses said and the people fear ye not stand still and see the salvation of the lord whom you have seen today ye shall see them no more the egyptians he's talking about the egyptians who you see today you're going to see them no more now we have the advantageous point of knowing how the story ends we know how god would part the sea and the children of israel would walk through on dry ground and the egyptians would try to pursue and how the the sea would close on them and you're right you didn't see them anymore there was no mo pharaoh i mean they were gone they were swallowed up in the sea we know and have that vantage point we know what happened to them but what about what's happening to you right now what about that thing that seems to be having you totally stopped let me tell you now is no time to give up now it's time to stand still and just see what god's gonna do he's got salvation for you he's got deliverance for you he's got a blessing for you second chronicles 2017 says ye shall not need to fight in this battle set yourselves stand ye still and see the salvation of the lord o judah and jerusalem fear not nor be dismayed tomorrow go out against them for the lord will be with you at one time the lord said go out and fight another time he said stand still and watch sometimes if we stand still he's going to fight the battle and you're not going to have to do a thing just stand back and watch god take care of the situation oh hear me if you'll see what god's doing for you in a trial and in a test rather than lamenting it rather than cursing it rather than being discouraged sometimes after you stand still you have to learn how to be still i must confess those were two words when i was younger that i heard a lot from my mama mark be still be still isn't it amazing the energy that children have that even when you're a line that's not moving you have to tell them to be still now wiggle britches be still mama had to tell me a lot be still the psalmist said be still and know that i am god god's got this god's got your situation if it seems like things have come to a stand still be still and know god's got your situation he said you're going to be exalted among the heathen i will be exalted in the earth if we'll lift up christ in our life when life comes to a standstill oh but i got a pink slip be still and no god still in charge i got a bad report from the doctor be still and know god's still in charge he's going to be with you he's going to deliver you or he's going to take you through whatever the situation be still and no i mean think about it even after philip witness to the ethiopian eunuch they didn't keep moving the chariot the bible said the chariot had to stand still they both got out of the chariot and they went down in the water so he could be baptized sometimes you need to listen to god's plan for your salvation i said today's pentecost sunday so let me tell you about one of the greatest standstills ever recorded the disciples enjoyed the excitement of being called personally by jesus they saw his mighty miracles they walked with him they communed with him they ate with him they were his closest associates but then the day would come that one of their very own judas would betray him the disciples would be there all the tumult that would take place during that betrayal they would see the mock trial that jesus would face they would experience all of the degrading acts that jesus would go through they would find themselves even as his associate fearing for their own lives just because they knew him and followed him they would experience the frustration of the crucifixion they would even experience the excitement of the resurrection and jesus communion with them but you see after experiencing that all i'm sure most anticipated that jesus would say now i'm going away so you guys go after it now instead in acts 1 4 we read this it says in being assembled together with them commanded them that they should not depart from jerusalem but wait but wait for the promise of the father which said he jesus speaking ye have heard of me for john truly baptized with water but ye shall be baptized with the holy ghost not many days since he's no look we're worried about a 20-minute delay in a traffic jam we're worried about a few problems in our life jesus has given them advice for a new dispensation to come on the scene on the day of pentecost he said if you just wait for the promise of the father there's something about to take place the holy ghost is about to come in hear me if you're under the sound of my voice today if you've been waiting for god to move you up spiritually you need to wait on the holy ghost god's got the holy ghost jesus dwelling in you for you if you'll just wait on it he's going to let you have it it said when they therefore were come together they asked of him saying lord will thou at this time restore again the kingdom of to israel they wanted a time frame when's this waiting going to be over with and he said on them it is not for you to know the time of the seasons which the father put in his own power but ye shall receive power after that the holy ghost has come upon you and ye shall bear witnesses unto me both in jerusalem in all judea and in samaria under the uttermost parts of the earth jesus said quit worrying about the stop worry about it's time for the holy ghost to come in you're going to have power when you get it and when he'd spoken these things while they beheld he was taken up and a cloud received him out of their sight now here's the waiting time i can imagine the experience that they've had is being tempered only by saying jesus is gone and he told us to wait but he didn't tell me how long to wait he he he just said that the holy ghost is going to come it's going to be poured out please hear me today the day of pentecost could not have taken place in the manner it did without first a waiting period they had to come to a standstill before the day of pentecost could take place there's some of you under the sound of my voice it seems like your life may have come to a standstill i submit to you your pentecost is here your pentecost is about to arrive if you haven't received the baptism of the holy ghost you need to keep seeking you need to keep waiting you need to be ready because he's going to pour his spirit out upon all flesh joel said for what did acts say in acts the second chapter and when the day of pentecost was fully come listen the traffic jam's not going to last forever the stop's not going to always be there they were all in one accord in one place that wasn't a vehicle that wasn't an accord that meant they were all together but the traffic's about to turn loose and suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind and it filled all the house where they were sitting and there appeared under them cloven tongues like as a fire and it sat upon each of them and they were all filled with the holy ghost and began to speak with other tongues as the spirit gave the entrance let me tell you today is the day of pentecost every day should be the day of pentecost in our life we need to be waiting on the promise of the father we need to be waiting on the power of the holy ghost stand with me for you see if you'll wait and take a stand you can be as second thessalonians 2 said whereunto he called you by our gospel to the attaining of the glory of our lord jesus christ you can obtain you can have christ in you therefore brethren stand fast and hold the traditions which you've been taught whether by word or our epistle first apostolic church this is a church for coming up on 63 years that has been 64 years we're in the 63rd year coming up on 64 years we have been standing fast in the apostles doctrine standing fast in the acts 2 message standing fast in the pentecostal experience i give you one last portion of scripture for ephesians 6 13 said wherefore take unto you the whole armor of god that you may be able to withstand in the evil day you see there's one thing it's one thing for life to come to a stand still but it's something else to be able to take a stand and stand fast for he said in having done all to stand stand ye therefore when i've done all i can do listen if lives come to a standstill and you know you're in god's will you've been serving god no need to sweat it no need to work god's just put a temporary stay he's got something special for you god has something in particular for you it's time to stand on what he's given you i want to ask everybody in this house today on this pentecost sunday i know not what the specifics of the situation in your life is but i wonder if there's somebody in this house that would like to step out and come forward and say lord i don't know why i'm facing what i'm facing but i'm going to take a stand to serve you no matter the situation lord i know that you have something for me but i don't know the direction yet but i'm coming to claim the stand and i'm going to move forward when you tell me to move and i'm not going to move until that's right come on if god has given you a standstill in your life don't be afraid come forward and say god i'm trusting in you i know you're going to bring deliverance that's right i know you're going to provide if you're in this house and you haven't yet received the baptism of the holy ghost come right now let him come into your life and you can receive what he has for you praise team i want you to lead us in praise as we come for a season of prayer hallelujah [Applause] is [Music] is [Music] [Applause] but by the grace of god [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] can you still leave i'm still standing don't know where i would be today [Applause] [Music] would you love the lord again right now would you give him praise [Applause] savior i thank you that i can stand for you i thank you for your power hallelujah hallelujah hallelujah first apostolic church thank you for taking a stand and being what god would have you to be i'm going to let you move to your seats just before dismissal again i greet every one of our guests in particular and i encourage our church family we are the friendliest church in town not by title not by proclamation but by action if there's guests nearby you or if they're not nearby you get close to them and make them welcome lord bless you be ready for a great time in the lord tonight service begins with prayer time at 6 followed by our main evangelistic service at 6 30. lord bless you you're dismissed in jesus name shake hands and be friendly