Cradock Baptist Church

05/24/2026

Sermon Notes
Sunday May 24,2026

Where Is Your Power?
Acts 2:1-13

A man at an airport was worried about missing his plane. He had no wristwatch, and he couldn't locate a clock, so he hurried up to a stranger and said, "Excuse me, could you tell me the time, please?"
The stranger smiled and said, "Sure." He set down the two large suitcases he was carrying and looked at his wristwatch. "It is 6:08, the temperature is 75. The barometric pressure is 30.19 and falling. Rain is predicted. In Madrid, the sky is clear. The temperature is 40 degrees Celsius. In Istanbul, the weather is sultry and the moon full."
"Your watch tells you all that?" the man interrupted.
"Oh, yes . . . and much more," said the stranger. "You see, I invented this watch, and there is no other timepiece like it in the world!"
"I want to buy that watch!" said the man. "I'll pay you $2,000 for it right now!"
"No, it's not for sale," said the stranger as he picked up his suitcases.
"Wait! $4,000. I'll pay you $4,000 cash," offered the man, reaching for his wallet.
"No, I can't," said the stranger. "You see, it has great sentimental value for me."
"O.K. listen," said the man. "I'll give you $10,000. I've got the money right here."
The stranger paused. "$10,000? Well, O.K. It's yours for $10,000." The man was absolutely elated. He paid the stranger, took the watch, and snapped it on his wrist with glee, and said, "Thanks," as he turned to leave.
"Wait," said the stranger. With a big smile, he handed the two heavy suitcases to the man and added, "Don't forget the batteries."

Silly story, but this is the continual temptation that haunts us as the church, is it not? That we will forget the batteries--that we will forget the source of our power. That we will leave behind what is essential to the life of the community of faith.

On February 2, 1985, the Daytona 500 Auto Race had just started when, on the beginning of the third lap, the $250,000 machine, driven by professional driver Donny Allison, rolled to a stop on the infield side of the track. When it was checked, it was found that no one had filled it with gas. (1)

How embarrassing. One of the top drivers in auto racing stalled because he had run out of gas. But that is where many churches are. And that is where many individuals are. Trying to operate without batteries. Trying to drive on an empty fuel tank.
Ever since Christ's ascension, the disciples and the women and the brothers of Jesus had been devoting themselves to prayer in the upper room.
They had been preparing themselves to receive the Holy Spirit that Christ had promised them.
Now it was the day of Pentecost and they were all together in one place. Suddenly, there came from heaven a noise like a violent, rushing wind, and it filled the whole house.
And they saw tongues of fire which seemed to rest on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues.
Now there were Jews living in Jerusalem from every nation on earth. And when this sound occurred, a large multitude of them came together, and they were bewildered because they were each one hearing the disciples speak in his own language.
"Are not all these who are speaking Galileans?" they asked. "How is it that we each hear them in our own language? We hear them in our own tongues speaking of the mighty deeds of God."
What can we learn from their experience that will energize us as we celebrate Pentecost today?

THE SOURCE OF THE CHURCH'S POWER IS THE SPIRIT OF GOD.
If we are going to have the joy and the energy and the enthusiasm of the early church, we are going to have to pray for God's Spirit to fall afresh on us.
Anytime we try to substitute any other kind of power for God's power, we are in trouble. It makes no difference what that power may be.
We might substitute spiritual power, but there is no substitute for spiritual power.
Or we might substitute what might be called celebrity power.
Many growing churches nowadays, as a central part of their ministry, bring in celebrities--musicians, athletes, politicians--to share their faith.
Nothing wrong with that--as long as we remember that these celebrities are just people. They sin just like the rest of us.
Remember, People have a way of letting us down.
There is even a danger of what we might call need-centered power.
One of the effective ways of growing churches in today's world is to focus on people's needs and to begin groups within the church to meet those needs. So in many churches today you will find all kinds of 12-step groups and recovery groups and support groups, etc. All of these are very good, and they are a vital part of the church's ministry.
We are here to meet people's social and emotional and even their physical needs. As long as we do not lose sight of our central reason for being.
Nothing in the church can substitute for God's Spirit as the basic source of our power.
If we ever become what God means for us to become, it will not be because of our programs--as effective as they may be. It will be because God's Spirit lifts us.

One writer has used the analogy of an albatross. He notes that the albatross has the longest wingspan of any living bird: 12 feet. He also notes that it is too heavy to fly--it can't support itself in the air.
In fact, in still air, it can't even take off. Yet the albatross is a marathon flier. Some speculate it can stay years at sea without returning to land.
Scientists put a radio transmitter on one to track it. After 30 days and 9,000 miles, the battery gave out, and the albatross was still over the ocean.
How can a bird too heavy to support itself be a marathon flier? The answer: it doesn't flap. It glides. It is a master at riding the winds.
For example, it knows that slightly higher, the faster air currents provide greater speed. Then it dives, letting gravity give acceleration. Then it catches an updraft off the waves, and the cycle starts all over again. The albatross not only survives winds of almost any force at sea, but it is not even blown off course. It can ride out the storms by reading the winds and circling. Then when calm returns, it continues on its way. (2)

We need to learn from the albatross. If we could ride the winds of God's Spirit, we could accomplish far more than we think possible.

THE SECOND THING WE LEARN FROM THE DAY OF PENTECOST IS THAT WHERE GOD'S SPIRIT IS THERE IS UNITY.
People of differing backgrounds, differing social classes, differing skin colors, differing national origins, all heard the Gospel in their own tongue. Rather than fragmenting into tiny self-serving groups, they were drawn into a cohesive whole.
One day, we are going to see how silly we have been about all the barriers we have erected between people.

When Billy Graham held his historic crusade in Montgomery, Alabama, in the sixties, he insisted on an integrated choir. The newspaper editorialized that Graham had come to Alabama and set the church back a hundred years. Graham's answer was classic: "If that's the case, I failed in my mission," said Graham, "I intended to set it back two thousand years." (3)
Where the Spirit of God is present, there is unity.
No longer is there male or female, black or white, Jew or gentile. There are only precious souls for whom Christ died. We are one in the Spirit.

A somewhat humorous story came across Associated Press lines sometime back about two groups of firefighters in a small town in Maryland that came to fight a fire and ended up fighting each other.
It seems that paid and volunteer firefighters got to the fire at the same time and argued over who should be the first to carry a hose into a burning townhouse. Eventually, they had to be separated by county police.
Fortunately, the fire was put out before too much damage was done.

BUT I COULDN'T HELP BUT THINK OF THE CHURCH.
Rather than fighting the fires of evil in this world, we would rather fight each other.
Not so with the church at Pentecost. They prayed together, ate together, even shared possessions with one another.
The source of the church's power is the Spirit of God. Where the Spirit is, there is unity.

WHERE THE SPIRIT IS, THERE IS OUTREACH TO OTHERS.
Where the Spirit of God is, people are concerned about sharing the good news of Christ with their family, their friends, their neighbors . . .
The church at Pentecost was a rapidly growing church. They were reaching out.

Richard Lederer is a teacher and writer who became nationally known by collecting what he calls ANGUISHED ENGLISH. Lederer collects such things as unintentionally funny headlines and signs, etc. You've seen some of his work. Here are some typical classified ads from one of his books:
"Home. $199,500. Great Location. 2/3's of an acre with 4 bedrooms, 2-bath, brick Cape. Built the way they used to. Won't last."
"For sale: Bull dog. Will eat anything. Loves children."
And my favorite: "Extremely independent male. 17 years old, needs to rent room. Call his mother at . . ."
PEOPLE magazine did a story on Lederer. Their photographer asked Lederer to think about setting up a humorous, posed picture that would somehow summarize his work and lead into the article.
The solution immediately presented itself. On the outskirts of Lederer's town stands a telephone pole with the street sign ELECTRIC AVENUE. Sure enough, right below it is a yellow diamond traffic sign announcing NO OUTLET. (4)

And that is the greatest danger for the church--that we will experience God's electricity but find no outlet.
That we will experience God's power but will refuse to share that power with others. That we will experience God's unity among ourselves but shut out others. That we will have the joy of God's Spirit but not try to bring joy to the world.
Have we forgotten the batteries? The source of the church's power is God's Spirit. Where the Spirit is, there is unity. And where the Spirit is, there is a concern for reaching out to others.

1. William R. Lampkin, MINUTE DEVOTIONS (Lima, OH: Fairway Press, 1990).
2. "Living In The Spirit," by Ken Bible, HERALD OF HOLINESS, May 1995, p. 32.
3. Jamie Buckingham, LOOK OUT, WORLD (Altamonte Springs, FL: Strang Communications Company, 1993).
4. Richard Lederer, MORE ANGUISHED ENGLISH (New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc 1993), 113-114.
This sermon is an adaptation of a sermon written by King Duncan.

05/24/2026

Phyllis Kraatz Celebration of life service

05/24/2026

05/22/2026

Christian sympathy to the Kraatz family at the passing of Phyllis. Celebration of life service Sunday at 2pm at Cradock Baptist Church .

Share Memories and Support the Family.

05/22/2026

Sermon Notes
Sunday May 17,2026

Where the Church Gets Its Power
John 17:6-19

It’s an exciting thing to be part of the church of Jesus Christ. We’ve got a good thing here, and we need to let the rest of the world know just how exciting it is.

There’s an old story about a young high school football star who was being recruited by a coach from a major college. The coach had never seen the young man play, so he asked him some direct questions. “Son,” he said, “I understand that you do the passing for your team. Are you a pretty good passer?”
“Am I a good passer?” the boy answered. “Why, I threw the ball 100 times this season and only had one incompletion--and that was because the receiver fell down before the ball got to him.”
The coach was impressed, “I understand that you also played defense,” he said, “are you a good tackler?”
“Am I a good tackler?’ the boy answered. “Why I’ll have you know that in one game this year, I sacked the quarterback three times.”
The coach rubbed his hands in glee. “I understand that you also do the punting for your team. Can you kick the ball pretty well?”
“Can I kick? I’ll have you know that I have to hold back on my punts to keep the ball from sailing into the stands.”
The coach was thrilled. “Tell me, son,” he said, “do you have any weaknesses?”
The boy thought for a moment and replied, “Well, I do have a tendency to exaggerate a little.”

That young man may have overstated his abilities more than a little. But what a refreshing change from most Christians.
If anything, most of us have a tendency to understate just how much God means in our lives, and how much of a privilege it is to be a part of the church of Jesus Christ.
That leaves us with a question we should all ask ourselves: “Just how much does God mean in our Lives?”
Following Jesus should be the most thrilling business in the world.
God has entrusted you and me with the work of bringing this beaten and battered world into a right relationship with God.
He has called us to bring abundant life to hearts that are cold and uncaring.
He has offered us the possibility of being part of the building of God’s kingdom in this world. Doesn’t that make you feel really good inside?
Our spirits ought to soar when we contemplate the great honor that God has bestowed upon us--the honor of being called God’s own people and being entrusted by God to reconcile the world to Himself.

In our Scripture lesson from John’s Gospel, Jesus prays for the church. He prays that they will be unified in the work to which they were called.
But I wonder if any of those disciples could possibly have imagined that more than 2,000 years later there would be people walking in their footsteps.
Two thousands years! Certainly God honored Jesus’ prayer.
But the truth of the matter is that there are more of us now than ever before. Those twelve became seventy. And the seventy became hundreds. And now those hundreds have become millions.
There are more Christians in the world today than there were people in the entire world just a century ago.
Don’t be deceived by how anemic the church is becoming in the United States and Europe. Around the world thousands of new people are coming to Christ every day. It’s truly an exciting thing to be part of the church of Jesus Christ. But where does the church get the power that sustains her through the ages? Well, I believe she gets it from three sources.
First of all, she gets it from the world’s need.
The world desperately needs what you and I have to offer. Whether in far off places or here at home, the world still needs to know the good news of Jesus Christ.

Years ago, in one of his books, evangelist Billy Graham spelled out the world’s need in very graphic terms. The world has changed much since he wrote these words, but it was the way things were only one generation ago. He writes: “In China when my wife was growing up, frequently babies who died before cutting their teeth were thrown out to be eaten by pariah dogs. The people feared that if evil spirits thought they cared too much for the children they would come and take another one. They tried to prove their indifference in this crude way.
“In India,” Graham continues, “a missionary who passed the banks of the Ganges noticed a mother sitting by the river bank with two of her children. On her lap was a beautiful new baby and whimpering beside her was a painfully [mentally challenged] child of about three. On her return home that night, the missionary saw the young mother still sitting at the river bank, but the baby was gone and the mother was trying to comfort her little mentally challenged child. Horrified at what she thought might be true, the missionary hesitated a moment and then walked over to the mother and asked her what had happened. With tears streaming down her cheeks, the mother looked up and said, ‘I don’t know about the god in your country, but the god in mine demands the best.’ She had given her perfect baby to the god of the Ganges.” (1)

Do you suppose these people needed to be liberated by the good news that God is not a God of darkness but of light, not a God of cruelty but compassion, not a God who demands fear but one who creates faith?
No wonder that in the developing countries, so many people even today are turning to Christ.
Nor do we need to go half way around the world to find people who need the good news that Christ brings. There are people right here in this community who are lonely and heartbroken.
There are people with physical needs, emotional needs, and spiritual needs. We are the people whom God has called to meet those needs.
And when we acknowledge that truth and live out our lives in service to our brothers and sisters in Christ, then the church really becomes the church, and the gates of hell cannot prevail against it.
And we have so much to give!

A visitor from an undeveloped country traveled across the United States. He saw many natural and man-made wonders like the Golden Gate Bridge, the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls and the Empire State Building. But he said that, of all the wonders of America, what impressed him most was the large size of America’s garbage cans. (2)

We have so many things that we have difficulty disposing of our leftovers.
When will we learn that the measure of our lives is not how much we have, but how much we give?
The love of God must flow through us to others. As long as it is flowing we are fresh and alive.
If we ever seek to dam up the flow and keep God’s blessings to ourselves, we will become like a stagnant pond. The church gets its power by meeting the world’s need.

The second power of the church is the fellowship we have together.
At least the fellowship we ought to have.

Author and pastor Charles Swindoll tells a powerful story about an old Marine Corps buddy of his who, to Chuck’s surprise, came to know Christ after he was discharged. Chuck was surprised because his buddy cursed loudly, fought hard, chased women, drank heavily, loved war and weapons, and hated chapel services.
Sometime later Chuck ran into this fellow, and after they had talked awhile, his buddy put his hand on Chuck’s shoulder and said, “You know, Chuck, the only thing I still miss is that old fellowship I used to have with all the guys down at the tavern. I remember how we used to sit around and let our hair down. I can’t find anything like that for Christians. I no longer have a place to admit my faults and talk about my battles where somebody won’t preach at me and frown and quote me a verse.”
It wasn’t one month later that in his reading Chuck came across this profound paragraph and I quote: “The neighborhood bar is possibly the best counterfeit that there is to the fellowship Christ wants to give his church. It’s an imitation, dispensing liquor instead of grace, escape rather than reality but it is a permissive, accepting, and inclusive fellowship. It is unshockable. It is democratic. You can tell people secrets, and they usually don’t tell others or even want to. The bar flourishes not because most people are alcoholics, but because God has put into the human heart the desire to know and be known, to love and be loved, and so many seek a counterfeit at the price of a few beers. With all my heart,” this writer concludes, “I believe that Christ wants his church to be unshockable, a fellowship where people can come in and say, ‘I’m sunk, I’m beat, I’ve had it.’ Alcoholics Anonymous has this quality our churches too often miss it.”
“Now before you take up arms to shoot some wag that would compare your church to the corner bar,” Chuck Swindoll continues, “stop and ask yourself some tough questions, like I had to do. Make a list of some possible embarrassing situations people may not know how to handle.
“A woman discovers her husband is a practicing homosexual. Where in the church can she find help where she’s secure with her secret? Your mate talks about separation or divorce. To whom do you tell it? Your daughter is pregnant and she’s run away for the third time. She’s no longer listening to you. Who do you tell that to?
“You lost your job, and it was your fault. You blew it, so there’s shame mixed with unemployment. Who do you tell that to? Financially, you were unwise, and you’re in deep trouble. Or a man’s wife is an alcoholic. Or something as horrible as getting back the biopsy from the surgeon, and it reveals cancer, and the prognosis isn’t good. Or you had an emotional breakdown. To whom do you tell it?
“We’re the only outfit I know that shoots its wounded,” Chuck concludes. “We can become the most severe, condemning, judgmental, guilt-giving people on the face of planet Earth, and we claim it’s in the name of Jesus Christ. And all the while, we don’t even know we’re doing it. That’s the pathetic part of it all.” (3)

That’s a pretty powerful indictment of the church at its worse.
But it’s not the kind of fellowship we are seeking. And it is not the kind of fellowship Christ blesses.
We want to be a fellowship that lifts up one another and then seeks to lift up those outside our doors.
We want to be a fellowship that draws people with real problems into its fellowship and surrounds them with Christ’s love. That is the second place the church gets its power, from our fellowship in Christ.

Finally, the church gets its power from the knowledge that God is with us through the power of his Holy Spirit.

I was reading about a pastor who says that he was totally unprepared when he was assigned to his first church. He says, “I will never forget my first shut-in. She was a dear lady who had been a member of that church for eighty years, but now she was in the declining years of her life. For all practical purposes this dear lady was deaf. She could hear you if you cupped your hands around her ear and shouted, ‘Good morning! How are you?’ She would nod in reply, because she had Parkinson’s disease and her speech was garbled. For all practical purposes she was also blind; and she was bedfast.
“I was not used to being with older people,” said this pastor. “I wanted so badly to minister to her but I felt so awkward. What kind of small talk could we make, even if, with all her handicapping conditions, we could talk? What did we have in common? I was totally incompetent, but I was faithful. I visited her regularly--though each time I felt like a complete fool. I had a prayer to close each visit--but how can you shout a prayer into someone’s ear? It was a totally frustrating experience.
“Eighteen months after my first visit with her, this dear lady died, and I conducted her funeral. Can you imagine my surprise when at that funeral the two daughters of this poor lady handed me a note? On it was scrawled almost illegibly the last message this lady ever communicated to anyone. On it were these words: ‘Please tell my young pastor how much his visits meant to me.’
“I have often looked back on this experience with wonderment and awe. I have come to this conclusion: As I sought to minister to this dear lady, it was not I who was giving comfort to her. It was Christ.” (4)

That is Christ’s promise to us, isn’t it? “Lo, I am with you, even unto the end of the age.”
It’s not easy ministering to others, but he will give us the power to overcome our weaknesses and to accomplish the task to which he has assigned us.
Where does the church get its power? From the world’s need, from our fellowship together and from the presence of the One who goes with us.
Jesus prayed that God would secure and unify his church.
That prayer has been answered in a great and marvelous way--even though the church today is certainly not all that He means for it to be.
But we are still meeting the world’s need. And He still is with us and needs us to carry out His mission!

1. Billy Graham, How To Be Born Again (Waco: Word Books, 1977).
2. Robert W. Youngs, What It Means To Be a Christian (New York: Farrar, Straug & Cudahy, 1960).
3. Leadership, Vol. 4, no. 1.
4. A personal experience of King Duncan as a young pastor.

This sermon is an adaptation of a sermon written by King Duncan.

05/22/2026

Join us for free Movie night Friday at 6:30
We are watching the Minecraft movie. Come see it on the bigger screen and enjoy popcorn and brownies! Come fellowship with us!

05/12/2026

Fri May 22,2026 at 6:30

05/12/2026

Tuesday May 19th at 7 PM

05/12/2026

Bible study cancelled this week
5-14-26