Reunion at Pentecost

Reunion at Pentecost

Genesis 11:1-9
Acts 2:1-13

The history of Pentecost goes back to the time of the Exodus when God’s servant, Moses, led the Israelites out of Egypt. It was at that point that certain holy days began to be required as part of their worship regimen.

The first holy day was the commemoration of the night before they left Egypt. They were to observe annually the Feast of the Passover to remember how the Angel of Death passed over those with the blood of a lamb sprinkled on their doorframes.

One of the blessings of the Christian church is that we share in the Eucharist together. By remembering together the death and resurrection of Jesus, we are bound by tradition, as were the children of Israel.

Fifty days into their journey across the Red Sea and into the wilderness, they arrived at Mount Sinai. There God gave them the law through Moses. They were then commanded to observe this pivotal event every 50^th day after the Feast of the Passover as God’s stamp of covenantal blessing on the children of Israel.

The new feast was called “Feast of Pentecost,” which in the Greek actually means “50^th day.”

Following the Resurrection of Jesus, the disciples had scattered. Jesus had to round them up more than once. He had to impress upon them that, while His mission had been completed, theirs was just beginning. He appeared to several of them through a locked door. He called to them to cast their nets on the other side of the boat and prepared a meal of fish for them on the shore.

We read in the first chapter of the Book of Acts that the disciples were assembled together with Jesus on the Mount of Olives. They were perhaps wondering what was going to happen from there. They were perhaps concerned that the security they had felt just a few days before the crucifixion when Jesus was triumphantly received in Jerusalem had evaporated. Now, Jesus is telling them that they are not to leave Jerusalem but are to wait for the gift the Father had promised – the baptism of the HS.

Having not the slightest clue as to the identity and mission of the HS, they were interested only in the fulfillment of what they had been taught. So they are again caught asking Jesus the same old question that they had asked days before His crucifixion, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”

That was a question that, despite the fact that Jesus had been raised from the dead, His disciples seemed unable to leave behind. The things of the Kingdom of God were still not revealed to them. They were still stuck in the teachings of the church. They could not seem to break away from the idea of a physical kingdom in Jerusalem.

Never did it occur to the disciples that in a few short days three-thousand Jews would believe in Christ. In fact, there are many Evangelicals today who seem to have missed the message that the first converts to the Christian faith were Jews – lots of them. Millions more have become Christians in the two thousand years since.

Jesus answered their question in this way: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the HS comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

Jesus was not confirming whether or not their expectations would be realized. He tells them, instead, that they will receive power through the HS. When that power came upon them, they immediately began teaching about the spiritual Kingdom of God. All thoughts of an earthly kingdom vanished when they witnessed the miraculous conversion of thousands of Jews.

Jesus had been taken up before their eyes and into a cloud that is commonly referred to as a “Shekinah” cloud – a cloud of glory, similar to the cloud that marked the presence of God with the children of Israel through their wilderness wanderings. This cloud was the affirmation of the godhead of Christ. He was received into God’s glory under the eyes of the faithful. And they were caught gazing up into the heavens, wondering what was going to happen next.

This king – this Messiah – to whom they had looked to sit on a throne in Jerusalem, was out of there. Instead, 2 men in white stood beside them. “Men of Galilee, why do you stand there 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.”

They then did what they had been told to do – went back to Jerusalem, joined in constant prayer and waited.

They didn’t have long to wait. The Ascension of Jesus had taken place forty days from Passover. The Feast of the Pentecost would take place in ten days. It is very certain that the disciples did not make the connection between the coming of the Holy Spirit and the Feast of Pentecost. But there is a definite connection.

First, note that Jesus was crucified during the Feast of the Passover – or just before. Jesus, the unspotted lamb of God, was sacrificed as the final Passover lamb. Those who had His blood sprinkled over the doorposts of their hearts – those who believed – were spared the fate of death from their sin.

While Jews from every nation, tribe and tongue were descending on Jerusalem to celebrate deliverance from bondage in Egypt, the real sacrifice was happening outside the city gate and beyond their awareness. Passover had left Jerusalem and was being re-enacted at the city dump. Those who celebrated Passover at the temple were to witness a strange event. The temple veil that shielded the people from the Holy of Holies was torn in two.

Jesus’ death, then, was to begin a new, fulfilled Passover. Fifty days later, there would be a new celebration of Pentecost as the day that believers in Jesus Christ as Lord were to receive a new law written not on tablets of stone but on their hearts.

In this transition, we move from the cold, hard, unforgiving master of a written code to the love of God spread abroad through our hearts by His Holy Spirit. The new Passover in Christ was the beginning of perfection through His work of those who acknowledge that they could not please God.

You can see, then, how dangerous it is for modern Christians to treat the Bible as though it were a written code of conduct. The written law of God was composed of words that go no further than the page and do not enter the heart.

Notice the continuity between the two dispensations – law and grace. The age of Grace does not replace the law; it is the confirmation of the law – its fulfillment in Christ. “What do I want with your sacrifices and your rituals?” God asks of His people. The day of sacrifices and rituals ended with an overlap of fifty days. For the Christian, the final sacrifice had been made.

What the written law does for us is convict us. There seems to be an innate sense of God’s judgment hanging over the heads of human beings: “If I do not obey God’s commandments, He will punish me, casting me into Hell.” Our natures are conscious of obeying God unwillingly and against our desires. Those who live by the written law, however, soon become enemies of God because of the weight of their sin and their inability to stand before God and be acceptable to Him. Unaided by the Holy Spirit, we just give up and become hardened against God’s judgment – a form of inner rebellion.

You might imagine these disciples, ten days after their Lord had left them, getting ready to celebrate Pentecost as the day that the God’s people had received the tablets of stone from Mt. Sinai. You might imagine that they had not yet begun the ceremonies but were on their way to the temple as were the Jews from every nation tribe and tongue.

Something was going to happen that had failed to happen at Passover. God was about to put His seal on the new covenant in the presence of the celebration of the old covenant. The Triumphant Entry into Jerusalem was about to re-enacted as a triumphant entry into the Kingdom of God.

It was 9:00 in the morning. We are told that there was a sound like the blowing of a hurricane that filled the whole house where they were staying. Tongues of fire came and sat upon the heads of these disciples of the crucified, risen Lord. They began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them – the tongues of thousands of Jews from all over the world.

We will go back, for a moment, to the scene at the Tower of Babel, where another failure of the written law had exacted its price.

It is after the flood. The descendents of Noah had begun to populate the earth, and some of them decided to build a city with a monument. They wanted to make a name for themselves, and one of the best ways of making a name for yourself is to have the tallest tower in the world. Call it the Empire State Building, if you wish – or the World Trade Center. They wanted to be the center of commerce and tourism so they would not have to wander from place to place. The outside world would come to them.

This city was to be located in the Tigris/Euphrates river valley, near where the Garden of Eden had been located and in modern Iraq.

We are told that everyone on the earth spoke the same language. They had in mind becoming the cultural center of the world. You would have thought that speaking the same language would have made it easier to live together, but apparently it simply made it easier to get into mischief.

God didn’t like this tower idea because it was done with the intent of celebrating human accomplishment. It reminds me of the tower that the Italian government tried to build for Mussolini. It was to be the tallest building in the world, and Mussolini would have his office at the top, suggesting that he would be a god. That tower ended in disaster as well.

What is key to this story is the Lord’s reaction to what was going on. “If with one language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.” So God confused their language so that they would be in conflict with each other.

Fast forward to the Feast of Pentecost. What God did that day though the Holy Spirit was to reverse what He had done at Babel. Here you have Jews from every known nation on earth listening to the apostles in their own tongues. From that day to this, even though Christians speak other languages, the one thing they share is the common language of faith. The only way that could happen would be through the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit that was poured out on the apostles that day.

The Spirit came pouring into their hearts, making them different people from what they were up to that point. Instead of thinking about what God was going to do next, they became loving men and women and willingly obeyed God. God became their tower of strength. The written law that had been so important to them 5 minutes before, suddenly came to life translated into spiritual law.

The Holy Spirit descends and fills the hearts of these disciples who are gathered together scared and full of sorrow, not knowing what was going to happen next if anything. He descends on them in tongues of fire and imparts to these poor, uneducated followers from Galilee the power and boldness to preach Christ fearlessly.

It was not the role of the Holy Spirit to write books and put laws into place. His role was to write God’s law and love on the hearts of men, creating new hearts so that we might be glad before God and desire to serve Him gladly.

It is not enough that Christ is preached throughout the world. The Word that is preached must be believed. The Holy Spirit must impress that preaching on the hearts of those listening.

What changes is this: the heart that believes has confidence in God’s love and does not fear being thrown into Hell for some infraction because of His wrath. The Holy Spirit has made the heart aware of God’s good will and graciousness toward us. The result is a desire to serve and please Him.

I will hasten to say that not all is accomplished at once. None of us is entirely perfect; this is a progressive process of being liberated from sin and terror. We are all affected by what disturbs others who may be so steeped in their sins as to be indifferent. The Holy Spirit is present within the believer to console us and strengthen us until His work is fully accomplished, which it never is.

The power of living the Christ life is to contend with the sins that we perceive that are in us as well as those that are not perceived. We are like sick persons in the hands of the Great Physician of our souls, never able to be free of weakness and faults.

Therein lies the hope. The Holy Spirit is given only to the anxious and distressed heart. The gift is too precious and noble for God to throw it away heedlessly. If you have the struggle with sin in your heart, it is because you have the Holy Spirit.

It is time to rejoice. You have passed over from death to life, even in the midst of your conflicts and doubts.