Apostolic Attitude — Part 1

Summary

Summary prepared by Acts 2:38 Life from the YouTube recording's caption track, read through the transcript panel — published in summary form; watch the full sermon at the source.

Because of the Times 1989 · The Pentecostals of Alexandria, Alexandria, LA Topics: Ministry and Calling · Worship · The Church

T. F. Tenney, forty years into Pentecostal ministry and confessing at the outset that he has not yet attained what he was apprehended for, preaches a single searching subject: the movement has the apostolic doctrine, and what it lacks is the apostolic attitude — the spirit, the relationship, and the demonstration that must carry the message. (The host's introduction is seamed out; the span is Tenney's voice from his opening thanks to the closing song, one continuous message — packet.md.)

The river at the door.

Weeks before, the Lord had directed him to the prophet Ezekiel's forty-seventh chapter — the river flowing out from under the threshold of the temple, deepening from the ankles to waters to swim in. He offers his rendering of it as a paraphrase and not as his text, and takes his stand on its picture: there is a river at the door of the church, and it begins to move when the ministry gets its feet wet. Nothing happened at the Jordan until the sole of the priest's foot touched the water; revival is standing at the threshold, waiting on a ministry willing to wade in past its ankles, its knees, its loins, until it is in over its head.

Scriptures: Ezekiel 47

Professor James.

For the lecture itself he chooses James — who could have introduced himself as the Lord's own brother or as an apostle, and instead opens his letter by calling himself a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. Walking the book, he takes the attitudes in order: self-identity no higher than a servant; impartiality toward the outsider, rich or poor, from the second chapter's first verse; the bridled tongue and the teacher's stricter judgment from the third chapter's opening verses; and from the fourth chapter, friendship with the world named as enmity with God, and the way back — God resisting the proud, giving grace to the humble, and drawing near to those who draw near to him. Attitude, not aptitude, determines altitude; the blessings are on the shelves beneath, reached by humbling, not on the shelves above.

Scriptures: James 1:1; James 2:1; James 3:1-2; James 4:4; James 4:6-8

The message without the ministry.

In Yugoslavia, years before, an old elder who had founded the work, been beaten, and been imprisoned for it told him through an interpreter that his people had captured the apostolic doctrine perfectly — and had not captured the apostolic spirit and attitude: they had the message but not the ministry, repeated the words but did not do the works. Tenney confesses the same conviction at home: he is preaching half of Paul's doctrine — the word, without the power and demonstration. Power comes out of relationship, he argues, the way John leaned on the breast of the strong-breasted God and fed there; and so the ancient promise stands at the center of the sermon — a people called by God's name, humbling themselves and praying, and heaven hearing and healing the land. Against his own forty years he sets the apostle's confession: he has not apprehended that for which he was apprehended, and if it does not happen soon, when will it happen in his life?

Scriptures: 2 Chronicles 7:14; Philippians 3:13

Right doctrine, wrong attitude.

Consecration cannot be a hurried, blemished offering grabbed on the way to the tabernacle; a quick consecration is usually an attempt to persuade God to bless plans already made. Jesus never rebuked the Pharisees for their doctrine, he says — it was their attitude he rebuked — and he retells the quip he heard in St. Louis: a man can have right doctrine and a wrong attitude, or a good attitude and wrong doctrine, and poor God is caught deciding whether to bless a right man who is wrong or a wrong man who is right. The prophet's teaching on fasting makes motive the whole matter: a fast mounted to be seen is a stink in God's nostrils. Desperation, though, creates a way: the apostles never taught the sending of anointed cloths, but desperate people who could not reach the apostles grabbed aprons and handkerchiefs off their bodies, and it worked. And the prodigal's road home was an attitude — not a scheme to work through his mother, but the resolve to come back as a servant, willing to be anything his father wanted; that attitude got him an entrance, and he became a son again. Relationship is the foundation of power: even at Babel, outside God's will, a people with a plan, communication, and cooperation could not be restrained — which is why the devil's oldest trick is to break communication and scatter.

Virtue holds up faith.

To faith must be added virtue — right living — because a man can have faith and not be living right, and virtue is the only thing that holds faith up; God is committed to character, not talent. Spirituality is not created but developed, and it develops best under pressure. The friend at midnight did not whisper at his neighbor's door; he beat on it, because a friend had come and there had to be bread on the table — and the church, God's last best hope, must beat on the door of heaven the same way. Redemption is expensive: God covered creation in five words, but half of one book and the whole of another are given to the tabernacle plan, because that plan is redemptive. Then the talents: the servant who kept his one talent clean, wrapped, and buried — who never smoked, drank, or committed adultery, but produced nothing — hears himself called wicked and slothful. Faith, Tenney says, is spelled r-i-s-k; a mistake is a credit to a man who quit talking long enough to try to do something.

Scriptures: 2 Peter 1:5-7