Pentecost
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Acts 2:1-21; Romans 8:14-17
1 When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2 And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3 Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
5 Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. 6 And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. 7 Amazed and astonished, they asked, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? 9 Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, 11 Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power." 12 All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, "What does this mean?" 13 But others sneered and said, "They are filled with new wine."
14 But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, "Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. 15 Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning. 16 No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: 17 "In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. 18 Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. 19 And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. 20 The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord's great and glorious day. 21 Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.'
Imagine it, if you will. Just a few short weeks earlier, Mary, and the disciples had watched as Jesus was crucified, died, and was buried. Three days later, they were electrified at the news that he’d risen from the dead.
Over the next few weeks, Jesus continued to meet with them, talk to them, and teach them.
Then, just a few days before, he’d … gone. In a way that was not unheard of for the Jews, and yet, was as strange to them as it would be to us, Jesus was there, and then he wasn’t. As we read responsively last Sunday, from the text in Luke: “He withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven.”
I remember the fall of 1989 for several reasons, but one of the main reasons that it remains a pivotal time in my life was that over the course of that year, I watched things happen that I never thought I’d see. I’ll just mention one here: the fall of the Berlin Wall. I had not been born when the wall went up, so it was a case of something having been there as long as I could remember, though I knew that it was a possibility that it could come down, that possibility seemed utterly remote, growing up during the cold war. The scene of the crowds climbing on and subsequently breaching the wall were factual enough, but had a certain element of surrealism to them.
In some ways, I think the followers who were with Jesus had similar feelings as they watched HIM ascend. It was not out of the realm of possibility for them, but it would certainly not be an expected event.
In their case, I suspect if they’d spent any time around Jesus throughout his ministry, they would have become accustomed to seeing unusual things happen on a regular basis, so this may well have been the latest of many.
So this thing had happened in their lives. These events had taken place that basically shook the foundations of all they had believed to be true – up until the moment they met Jesus, culminating in his ascending into heaven!
What could possibly top that? What more could happen that would be better than their best day ever?!
Jesus never disassociated himself from the Jewish religion. He remained a practicing Jew all his earthly life. Consequently, his followers initially didn’t consider themselves as separated from that tradition. It wasn’t until they began to be called “Little Christs” at Antioch that the differentiation began. Up until then, they referred to themselves as the followers of “The Way” – that being the way of Jesus.
That is why they were celebrating the feast of Pentecost. Pentecost was a celebration of the closing of the harvest originally, similar in some ways to our own Thanksgiving celebration. It was called the Festival of First Fruits, for the first fruits of the harvest, or the festival of weeks, coming as it did, at the end of a period of 7 weeks of harvest. It had, over time, come to be a commemoration of the giving of the Law to Moses on Mt. Sinai, and that is how it was being observed by the time of Jesus, and a time to renew the Mosaic covenant. It was, because of that, the second most important festival after Passover.
Either way, the point is, the disciples were observing Pentecost as part of their Jewish heritage.
Somewhere in the back of their minds was the promise that Christ had made to them; that God would send a helper. But they probably didn’t have a clear idea of what to expect. They were accustomed to the Torah being their help, up until when they met Jesus.
Matthew and Luke both preserved the distinction John the Baptist made between his baptism- with water, and Jesus’ baptism – with the Holy Spirit. Luke connects the two here at the event at Pentecost. So Luke brings John's baptism of Jesus in the Jordan and the Spirit's baptism of assembled believers at Pentecost into a parallel in which each event is seen as the final determining factor for all that follows--for the ministry of Jesus in Luke's gospel and for the mission of the Church.
Pentecost was for Judaism the day of the giving of the law, for Christians it is the day of the coming of the Holy Spirit. So for Luke the coming of the Spirit upon the early Christians at Pentecost is not only a parallel to the Spirit's coming upon Jesus at his baptism, it also shows that the mission of the Christian church, as was the ministry of Jesus, is dependent upon the Holy Spirit. And by his stress on Pentecost as the day when the miracle took place, he is also suggesting (1) that the Spirit's coming is in continuity with God's purposes in giving the law, and yet (2) that the Spirit's coming signals the essential difference between the Jewish faith and commitment to Jesus, for whereas the former is Torah-centered and Torah-directed, the latter is Christ-centered and Spirit-directed.
There is, of course, nothing necessarily sensory about the Holy Spirit. Yet God in his providence often accompanies his Spirit's working by visible and audible signs--particularly at certain crises in redemptive history. This he does to assure his people of his presence. In vv.2-4 three signs of the Spirit's coming are reported to have appeared, each of them--wind, fire, and inspired speech--being considered in Jewish tradition as a sign of God's presence.
Wind as a sign of God's Spirit is rooted linguistically in the fact that both the Hebrew word ruah and the Greek word pneuma mean either "wind" or "spirit," depending on the context, and this allows a rather free association of the two ideas (cf. Jn 3:8). Ezekiel had prophesied of the wind as the breath of God blowing over the dry bones in the valley of his vision and filling them with new life (Eze 37:9-14), and it was this wind of God's Spirit that Judaism looked forward to as ushering in the final Messianic Age. Thus Luke tells us that one sign of the Spirit's coming upon the early followers of Jesus was "a sound like the blowing of a violent wind." Just why he emphasized the "sound" of the blowing of the "wind" is difficult to say. This sound "came from heaven" and "filled the whole house," symbolizing to all present the presence of God's Spirit among them in a way more intimate, personal, and powerful than they had ever before experienced.
Fire as a symbol of the divine presence was well known among first-century Jews (cf. the burning bush [Ex 3:2-5], the pillar of fire that guided Israel by night through the desert [Ex 13:21], the consuming fire on Mount Sinai [Ex 24:17], and the fire that hovered over the wilderness tabernacle [Ex 40:38]). John the Baptist explicitly linked the coming of the Spirit with fire (cf. Mt 3:11; Lk 3:16). The "tongues of fire" here are probably not to be equated with the "other tongues" of v.4 but should be taken as visible representations of the overshadowing presence of the Spirit of God.
Also significant is Luke's statement that these tokens of the Spirit's presence "separated and came to rest on each of them." This seems to suggest that, though under the old covenant the divine presence rested on Israel as a corporate entity and upon many of its leaders for special purposes, under the new covenant, as established by Jesus and inaugurated at Pentecost, the Spirit now rests upon each believer individually. In other words, though the corporate and individual aspects of redemption cannot actually be separated, the emphasis in the proclamation of redemption from Pentecost onward is on the personal relationship of God to the believer through the Spirit, with all corporate relationships resulting from this.
The last page and a half that I’ve read to you was pulled directly from the Zondervan NIV Commentary that is part of a software package I use to prepare the messages you hear on Sunday mornings.
It is informative, has good insights, and helps tremendously when I’m struggling with a particular passage, or struggling for words to say. Using them as a part of the sermon takes something away, though, from the process – for ME.
I read somewhere that preaching is speaking publicly about how God is working in your life, what God is teaching you, where God is leading you. It occurs to me that in that case, we should ALL be preaching, in one form or another. As our banners say, you shall be my witnesses – my preachers –
in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the Earth. All our words – the Greek word for “word” is logos - about God – the Greek word is Theos – Theos-logos – our Theology IS what God is doing in us – and hopefully, through us.
My sense of the leading of the Holy Spirit is one that is formed by a contradiction in terms - an expectation of the unexpected. In other words: the expected unexpected. Scripture is full of examples where, time after time, God popped up in the most unexpected places. In the voice of a donkey, in a field of dry bones, in a 12 year old shepherd boy, the youngest son of an aging father, who was much better at using a sling than a king’s armor, in a 14 year old teenager from a small backwater town called Nazareth, in the equally backwards state of Galilee. Though God’s spirit descended on the church in Jerusalem, the movement ignited by that inflowing took off in the unexpected place by even those who first saw it come – among the gentiles.
Last Friday night, at the lock-in, at the beginning of the evening, they had a devotional time. Not unusual, since it WAS a church-sponsored event. It was brief … maybe a half hour. There was a puppet show, followed by a meditation given by Phil Bryant, whose wife Karen works with the children at Rappahannock Christian Center. At the end of the devotional time we had a prayer time. Where I was sitting happened to be near where the Pastor of the church, Scott Adams, was standing. If you know about RCC, you know it is affiliated with the Assemblies of God denomination. The AOG is what is called a charismatic denomination. They ‘practice’ the gifts of the Spirit. What that means is that on any given Sunday, you are going to hear people praying in tongues, being slain in the Spirit, speaking a word of knowledge, or of prophecy, or of wisdom, or people being healed… any number of manifestations of the Spirit.
Last Friday was not very different. As soon as Phil began to pray, so did Scott and several other members of the congregation – in tongues. I was expecting it, but it still caught me a little off-guard, and raised questions in my mind. I guess I could say it surprised me.
God seems to have a preference for surprising us. The question in verse 12 of the 2nd chapter of Acts would just as easily jump to our lips as it did to the people of Jerusalem in the 1st century:
What does this mean?
What DOES it mean, especially for us here at Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?
It seems the rub in dealing with the Spirit of God is that, just like wind, or like fire, it is difficult, if not impossible to completely control. We like our religion to be … controlled, predictable. As I’ve said before, humans are creatures of habit. We don’t always like change. We prefer to see and hear and do things that we’ve done before, because we know what comes next.
Romans 8:
14 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. 15 For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, "Abba! Father!" 16 it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.
Again: what does that mean?
It can mean just about anything. The world IS an unpredictable place. Our hearts cry for predictability, for knowing what comes next, in reaction to that very uncertainty we experience every day. We don’t KNOW what will happen tomorrow, or even this afternoon, so we are comforted in the knowledge of what is to come.
I think what we can learn from both these passages – God is a God of unpredictability, in SPITE of unpredictability. God is an unpredictable God. He surprised Jonah with his compassion for the people of Niniveh, and in spite of Jonah’s protests, let the people live.
He surprises us with the offer to become children of his, to enter into relationship with him, to know him and be known by him.
Let’s pray.
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