Happy Pentecost Sunday, church. This is one of the most significant days on the Christian calendar, and I do not want us to rush past that. What we are celebrating this morning is not a tradition or a religious holiday. We are celebrating the moment that changed everything.

Fifty days after the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit was poured out on one hundred and twenty believers gathered in an upper room in Jerusalem, and the church was born. These were ordinary men and women who had walked with Jesus, watched Him die, witnessed His resurrection, and then waited, just as He had told them to. And on that morning, heaven broke open, and everything changed.

The same Jesus who had died on a cross, risen from the grave, and ascended into heaven kept His promise and sent the Comforter. He had told His disciples, "I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever" (John 14:16). That promise was not just for them. It was for everyone who would follow. And nothing has ever been the same since.

Every Spirit-filled believer in this room today is a direct result of what happened on that day. Every healing, every deliverance, every soul that has ever been saved, every life transformed by the power of God traces back to that upper room. This was not a one-time event that God tucked away in the pages of history. Pentecost is not ancient history. Pentecost is our history. It is the story of how we got here, and it is the reason we are still here. And as long as the Spirit of God is moving, that story is still being written.

So this morning, before we do anything else, I want to take a moment and just be grateful. Grateful that God did not leave us as orphans. Grateful that He sent the Holy Spirit to live inside of us, to empower us, to guide us into all truth. Jesus promised His disciples, "I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you" (John 14:18). That promise was kept on the day of Pentecost, and it is still being kept in the lives of believers today. Grateful that the fire that fell in Jerusalem is still falling today.

Now, the Holy Spirit put it on my heart to preach on the unexpected. I did not go looking for this message. This message came looking for me. The Spirit of the living God dropped this in my spirit, and I have been carrying it all week like a fire shut up in my bones (Jeremiah 20:9). There are times when God will not let you put something down until you deliver it, and this is one of those times. I do not know who this is for. I do not know exactly what this is about. But I know this. God said He is going to do the unexpected.

Not the expected. Not the predictable. Not the outcome you have already mapped out in your mind. God said what He is getting ready to do does not fit in the category of normal. It is not going to be ordinary. It will not look like last year or feel like the season you just came out of. Because God is not in the business of repeating what you have already seen. He is in the business of doing what you have never seen before. He is the God who declared, "See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?" (Isaiah 43:19). And if you are going to receive what He has for you, you are going to have to let go of what you think it is supposed to look like.

He is the God of the suddenly. He is the God of the out-of-nowhere. He is the God who shows up in a situation everybody else has written off and does something nobody saw coming. He is the God who parts seas, closes the mouths of lions, and raises the dead. And I came to tell somebody this morning, God is getting ready to do the unexpected in your life.

Maybe you came in this morning just because it is Sunday. You got up, got dressed, and showed up, and there is nothing wrong with that. Maybe you are watching online and tuned in out of habit. I am glad you are here either way. But God did not bring you here just to fill a seat. He brought you here because He has a word for you, because He has not forgotten about you, and because He is getting ready to do the unexpected. And He wanted you in the room when it happened.

The Bible says He is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all you could ask or think (Ephesians 3:20). That is not church language. That is a promise. It means God is not limited by your imagination. What He is getting ready to do is bigger than what you have been praying for, bigger than what you have been believing for, bigger than the dream you were almost embarrassed to dream because it seemed too far out of reach. That is the mind-blowing God we serve. That is the yoke-breaking God we serve. That is the door-opening God we serve. So get ready, because the unexpected is already on its way.

Now I have to be honest with you before we go any further. Pastor to congregation, heart to heart. These are troubling times. I do not care how much faith you have or how long you have been walking with God. You do not know from one moment to the next what is going to happen, and the news cycle alone is enough to shake your peace if you are not careful. Jesus Himself said, "In this world you will have trouble" (John 16:33). He did not say you might. He did not say it was a possibility. He said you will. But He did not stop there, and neither will I.

It used to be that we had some absolutes, some truth we could build around, some things that were sacred and untouchable. But we are living in a moment where truth has become negotiable, and conviction has become offensive. And if I stood up here and acted as if none of that bothered me, I would be lying to you. I have faith. I believe in God. But sometimes when I lay down at night, the weight of what is happening in this world is heavy on my chest. Sometimes when I get up in the morning and the day has not even started yet, I am already troubled. Like the psalmist who cried out, "My heart is in anguish within me; the terrors of death assail me. Fear and trembling have beset me; horror has overwhelmed me" (Psalm 55:4-5). That is not a lack of faith. That is an honest man talking to an honest God. And I have a feeling I am not the only one in this room who knows what that feels like.

But here is what I also know. The same God who is able to do the unexpected has not been caught off guard by any of this. Not one moment of it. He is not wringing His hands in heaven, wondering what comes next. He is still on the throne, He is still in control, and He is still working all things together for the good of those who love Him (Romans 8:28). And that is exactly why we need what this day is about.

But I want to tell you what has kept me from going under. It is the church where I receive the Word of God, and that Word is my therapy. It is my detox zone. It is where I am reminded that the world has been crazy before, that the prophets of old worked against adverse conditions and still called fire down from heaven, still called water out of a rock, still rode into cities and turned them upside down. The same God who showed up for Elijah on Mount Carmel, who opened the Red Sea for Moses, and who shut the mouths of lions for Daniel is the same God we are serving this morning. And the more I go into the Word of God, the more I am fascinated not just by the story, but by the circumstance in which it occurred. In our text today, the circumstances that surround the story are as powerful as the story itself.

This generation of Jews had lost power in their own country. They were on their land but not empowered to function in their own environment. Oppressed by Rome. And it is one thing to be oppressed in a strange country. It is another thing entirely to be oppressed in your own house, on your own turf, in a familiar environment, and not empowered in your own situation. They were surrounded by God's promises and yet living beneath the weight of a power that was not their own. And I wonder if there is somebody here this morning who knows what it feels like to be on familiar ground but still feel like you are losing.

They even called it Herod's temple. Think about that. When did Herod get a temple? Herod was a political appointee, a puppet king with no covenant with God, no anointing, no calling. But somehow his name ended up on the house of God. And it was not just symbolic. Herod had worked his way into the finances of worship, taxing people on their giving, people who had sacrificed to bring an offering, people who just wanted to come and worship. It was exploitation dressed up in religious clothing.

And so, when Jesus walked in and saw what had been done to His Father's house, He did not call a committee meeting. He did not file a complaint. He turned the tables upside down. Because there are some things that grieve the heart of God, and Jesus was not willing to be quiet about it.

I think if He were to walk into some of what is happening in the world today in the name of Christianity, there would be some tables on the floor again. Because we have confused His kingdom with our kingdom, the gospel with our own perspectives, and now a doctrinal disagreement sends people to hell without even needing a Bible verse, just an opinion. We have taken the most inclusive invitation ever extended to humanity, "whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely" (Revelation 22:17), and turned it into an exclusive club with our own membership requirements.

The Jews who followed Jesus had an underlying motive. Even His own disciples looked at Him and asked,

"Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?" (Acts 1:6).

What they were really asking was: when are You going to give us back control of our own land? They were not just looking for a Savior. They were looking for a revolutionary, someone who would march on Rome and take back what had been taken from them. The coming of the Messiah gave them hope that He was strong enough to fight back.

But he did not fight back. He died.

Rome beat Him half to death, and the Lord of glory died. Thomas said he was through with it. And I am not too hard on Thomas. Because there is a hurt that can hurt so bad it shakes you down to your toes, and you do not want to be anywhere near anything that reminds you of that kind of pain. That is not weakness. That is a wounded heart trying to survive. And some of you have lived long enough to know what that feels like. There is a pain so deep you will block a face on social media, not wanting any sign of it to surface again.

And Thomas said,

"Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it" (John 20:25).

And Jesus showed up. Because he understood Thomas's disappointment. He did not write him off. He did not leave him in his doubt. He came to him, held out His hands, and said believe.

Judas had hung himself. Peter had gone back to fishing. Everything was coming apart. And still He rose. Still, He rose. Because the grave could not hold Him, hell could not stop Him, and death did not have the final word.

Jesus died and rose from the dead, but He only showed Himself alive to believers. After forty days with many infallible proofs, He stepped onto a cloud and ascended into heaven, and left them standing there, looking up, as their dreams went up in the air with Him. The angel said,

"Men of Galilee, why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven" (Acts 1:11).

In other words, stop looking up and start moving out. He is coming back, but until He does, you have an assignment. There is a world that does not know what you know. There are people dying without the hope that is living inside of you. So go and preach the gospel.

"You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth" (Acts 1:8).

Not the power to dance. Not the power to make a name for your ministry. Power to be witnesses. You do not need a witness unless someone is on trial. And Jesus said, I am going, and I am still on trial. I am going to be controversial even after I am gone. The world will question who I am, debate what I said, and dismiss what I did. And that is exactly why He looked at them and said, you shall be witnesses unto Me.

So the disciples gathered in the upper room, waiting. But I want you to understand what that waiting actually looked like. These were not people sitting comfortably in a prayer meeting. These were people who had watched the One they had given everything to get arrested, beaten, and crucified. Yes, He had risen. Yes, they had seen Him and touched Him. But now He was gone again, and they were left in Jerusalem with a promise and nothing else.

Ten days of waiting with no timeline, no instructions, no idea what it would look like when it came. Ten days sitting with grief, questions and memories. Ten days of wondering whether they had heard Him right, whether the promise was really for them, whether anything was ever going to change. The city was moving on outside those walls. Life was continuing. And they were in a room waiting on something they could not see, could not explain, and could not produce on their own. But they waited anyway. And that kind of waiting is not passive. That is faith with nowhere else to go.

Have you ever been in that upper room? In that season where God gave you a promise, but nothing has happened yet, holding onto a word that has not manifested, waiting on a breakthrough you cannot see any evidence of? That is a place where doubt knocks on the door every morning. Where the enemy whispers that you misheard, that it is not coming, that you might as well go back to your old life.

But they stayed. They tarried. They kept praying and kept believing. And then, on the fiftieth day after Passover, at the feast of Pentecost, when Jerusalem was packed with pilgrims from every nation under heaven, God did not whisper. He did not ease them into it gradually. He did not send a memo or give them a five-minute warning. He showed up in a way that nobody in that room could have anticipated, planned for, or manufactured on their own.

And then, suddenly, the unexpected.

"When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them" (Acts 2:1-4).

Nobody planned that. Nobody scheduled it. Nobody put it on the calendar. They walked into it, and it happened to them. God orchestrated the unexpected, and it disrupted everything: the city, the religious establishment and the disciples themselves. That is what the Holy Spirit does. He is the ultimate disruptor.

A true work of the Holy Spirit will not leave you where it found you. It will carry you somewhere you have never been and ask you to do something you have never done. People get healed. People get delivered. Marriages are reconciled. A true move of the Spirit disrupts things, and that disruption is God's mercy.

Have you met the God who speaks to mountains and tells them to throw themselves into the sea, and they go (Mark 11:23)? The God who walked on water in the middle of the night. The God who stopped a funeral procession and told the dead man to sit up, and he did (Luke 7:14). The God who turned water into wine at a wedding (John 2:9). The God who fell asleep in the back of the boat during a violent storm while everybody else was panicking. The God who walked into a graveyard and set a man free from a legion of demons (Mark 5:8). The God who was hanging on a cross, bleeding and dying, looked out at the people who put Him there and said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing" (Luke 23:34). And then rolled His own stone away, got up out of the grave, and walked out into the garden alive again.

Have you met this God who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us (Ephesians 3:20).

I believe God sent this message to wake somebody up. Because the enemy wants to lull you back to sleep until Monday looks like Tuesday and Tuesday looks like Wednesday, until you stop expecting anything, until the fire dies down and the hunger fades and you settle for ordinary when God has called you to extraordinary. But I prophesy disruption over your life. I declare change. I declare the unexpected, the exceptional, the extraordinary, the supernatural, and the magnificent work of God. "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future" (Jeremiah 29:11). God has not forgotten about you, and He is not finished with you yet.

I believe this is going to be your season for the unexpected. The season the cycle breaks. The season God strengthens you in places you have never had strength before. The season the tail becomes the head (Deuteronomy 28:13).

Do not look for me where you left me. I am getting ready to lend and not borrow (Deuteronomy 28:12).

We are getting ready to build. We are investing in the community. They may have said we would never build, but I refuse to have another season like the last one. Something is going to move. Something is going to change. Something is going to open up. Because God is not finished writing our story, and the next chapter looks nothing like the last one.

There may be someone here, someone listening, and maybe you lost your job, and the Holy Spirit is saying get up. Maybe you lost your friends, and the Holy Spirit is saying get up. Maybe you lost the thing you thought you could not live without, and the Holy Spirit is saying get up. The same Spirit who filled that upper room and turned the world upside down is living inside you right now. He is the same Spirit who raised Jesus Christ from the dead, and if He could roll away that stone, He can roll away whatever has been blocking your breakthrough. And He is saying what He has been saying since Pentecost. You are not finished. You are not forgotten. You are not too far gone.

Do not give up. Do not think about quitting another night. Because you have not even met the new revised version of yourself yet, the version of you that the Holy Spirit is about to bring out. You do not need a person to change your life. You do not need a check to change your life. You need an encounter with God to change your life. One moment in the presence of God can do what years of striving could never accomplish. An encounter with the Holy Spirit, a kingdom dimension in your life, will change everything.

"Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen" (Ephesians 3:20-21).

Graphics, notes, and commentary from LifeChurch, Ministry Pass, PC Study Bible, Preaching Library, and Sermon Central. Scripture from the New International Version unless otherwise noted.