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“The empty tomb is the conduit through which the power of the Spirit flows.”
May 24, 2026 Aaron Gosser, Teaching Elder • Kingdom Church Troy
The Power Behind the Walls
Think about the first thing you did this morning. Maybe you flipped a light switch. Grabbed your phone. Shuffled toward the coffee maker. Every one of those ordinary actions draws on the same invisible infrastructure — an unseen power running behind the drywall of your home, threading through everything you rely on. You don’t think about it. You don’t have to. It’s just there. Until it isn’t. When the power goes out, suddenly you can’t stop thinking about it. You realize your entire life had been resting on something you’d stopped noticing. There’s something deeply familiar in that image when you hold it next to the Holy Spirit. We are surrounded by the presence of the living God. And we have grown comfortable. We’ve swapped reverence for familiarity. We treat what Scripture calls a consuming fire more like a household pet — warm, convenient, on our terms. This Pentecost Sunday, we were invited to look more carefully at what we’re actually dealing with.
Three Ways We Get It Wrong
A thread woven through 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel exposes a pattern — charm, trophy, and cart — three ways God’s people tend to mishandle his presence. First, the charm. When the Israelites were losing to the Philistines, they didn’t pray — they grabbed the ark. “Let’s bring it out,” they reasoned, “and God will have to support us.” They weren’t seeking God; they were weaponizing him. They turned the epicenter of divine power into a lucky rabbit’s foot, a tool for their agenda. And… it didn’t work. God’s power, it turns out, does not flow through the conduit of our agenda. Second, the trophy. When the Philistines captured the ark and placed it beside their god Dagon, they discovered what happens when you try to make the God of the universe share a shelf. By morning, Dagon was face-down on the ground. By the next morning, Dagon’s head and hands had been cut off. You cannot domesticate an all-consuming fire. You cannot fit the Creator of the universe into your existing lifestyle without him shattering everything else in the room. Third, the cart. When David went to bring the ark home, he copied the Philistines — loading it onto an ox-cart rather than following God’s clear instructions. The oxen stumbled. A man named Uzzah reached out to steady the ark and was struck dead. It feels harsh. But Uzzah had forgotten what he was dealing with. He approached the holiness of God on his own terms — uninsulated, as it were — and the current was too much. We bypass God’s instructions for relationship, and then we wonder why we get burned.
The Obed-Edom Option
David, terrified, handed the ark off to a Gentile named Obed-Edom. And here is what happened: for three months, Obed-Edom and his entire household were blessed. Why? He didn’t try to use the ark to win a war. He didn’t force it onto a shelf beside his other valuables. He didn’t cart it around for a parade. He simply opened his home. He welcomed the presence. He gave it space. He gave it reverence. One word covers all of that: submission. And that submission became the source of life itself.
Pentecost and the Inflection Point
The disciples in the upper room were doing exactly what Obed-Edom had done — waiting, praying, submitting to whatever God was going to do, whenever he chose to do it. They had no agenda, no timeline. They had simply made room. And then Pentecost happened.
Acts 2:1–4 — “When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.”
Pentecost is an inflection point — not just a historical event but a reshaping of everything. The same power that once dwelled behind the layered walls of the temple, the same holiness that toppled idols and struck down those who approached carelessly, now rests on ordinary people in an upper room. Christ has broken down the dividing walls (Ephesians 2:14). His sacrifice made us fit to carry what could not before be carried. We are now, Paul says, being built together as a dwelling place for God by the Spirit (Ephesians 2:22). That same power lives in you.
Living in Light of the Empty Tomb
The question worth sitting with this week: What would God do through a people wholly submitted to him? God doesn’t share shelf space. His grace will topple the other things we’ve placed at the center — not as punishment, but as the inevitable consequence of welcoming a consuming fire into your home. He desires relationship, and his grace has given us a way to have it. But it requires submission, not merely acknowledgment. The empty tomb is the conduit. The Spirit flows through it. When we stop trying to run the current through our own plans and agendas — when we simply make room, the way Obed-Edom did — we find blessing in place of burn-out. How do we live in light of the empty tomb? One open door at a time.
He is risen. He is risen indeed.