June 7 2020
Acts 2:1-13
This past week we had what, to me, was our first big scary storm. These are the storms where there is a hush, a quiet, as the sky turns pitch black then the wind begins to howl followed by thunder, lightning and all the usual terrifying aspects of such storms. The storm we had this past week was fairly calm as there was little damage done. I say this because in the past these kinds of storms have not been too kind to us. Two years ago we had one of these wild storms blow through. I had spent the better part of a week weeding, mulching and planting annuals so that I could feel pretty good about how everything looked going into summer. Then the storm hit and it was pretty nasty. Jennifer was at work so it was just my two daughters and I who were at home. As the sky grew darker and darker and the wind became to scream we decided to head for the basement. Just as we turned to open the basement door we heard a crash as a limb from a tree came crashing through the ceiling landing with a thud on the floor, rain and insulation came blowing in the gaping hole in the roof. As my daughter turned to see what had happened she angrily said in so many words, not again. You see, it was just four years prior to this storm was when we had lost our entire house to a similar storm which blew a hundred foot tall tree on to our house. So, when I say that storms make me a little edgy you can begin to see just why this is so.
It is my experience with storms that makes me understand the mighty wind part of the Pentecost story. I can imagine the terror on the faces of those who had gathered in the Temple when this happened because I probably would be terrified too. In a way, it is good to have these details of this strange happening on what we call Pentecost because I believe that there is much about the story that is really hard to wrap our minds around. I mean a mighty rushing wind is one thing but what do you do with tongues of fire and speaking in other tongues? We have to wonder just what does it all mean and why is this day so important to us as followers of Jesus? Often we hear it said that Pentecost is the birthday of the church but what does that even mean? It is hard to take away much of anything from the story of Pentecost other than a lesson in church history. This is unfortunate because I believe that what happened on Pentecost is vitality important for us as Christ followers today, in our time, as we live in a world that feels like it is slowly unraveling into chaos.
We begin to figure out what happened at Pentecost with the festival of Pentecost itself. This festival is in scripture, also called the Festival of Weeks as we read in the twenty third chapter of Leviticus. It is called the Festival of Weeks because the people of Israel were to count seven full weeks from the day after the Sabbath of Passover, from the day that they brought their offering before the Lord. The day after the end of the seven weeks, on the fiftieth day, the people of Israel were to have a Sabbath day to celebrate the first fruits of the wheat harvest. The Greek term for fifty is pente, which is where we get the title of Pentecost.
What is also very important for us to know is that God took these harvest festivals and he gave them a greater significance. With the Festival of Weeks, which celebrated the wheat harvest, what is also celebrated is the giving of the Law to Moses at Mt. Sinai. The people would remember what is written in the nineteenth chapter of Exodus whereMoses tells the people of Israel, “You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles wings, and brought you to myself. Now therefore if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” This is the story of the first fruits of God’s care for his people as he bore them up upon eagles wings and told them that they were his Crown Jewels, his most precious treasure. As they remembered this great love God had for them the people of Israel would then renew their commitment to the covenant relationship they had with God.
Now, it might seem kind of trivial to know this background to Pentecost but it turns out that it is very important for us to understand all of this in order to make sense of what this day is to us as followers of Jesus. This becomes even more clear when we realize that the phenomenon that we witness in our account of Pentecost, the mighty wind, the tongues of fire, the voices speaking in strange languages, all of these have a connection with what happened on Mt. Sinai.From the nineteenth chapter of Exodus we read of how on the third day that the people of Israel had camped at the foot of Mt. Sinai, in the morning of that day there was thunder and lightning and thick clouds upon the mountain.It was on this morning that Moses called the people to come out of the camp to come and meet God. Mt. Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the Lord had descended upon the mountain in fire. There was the sound like a loud trumpet blast and as this blasting noise became louder, Moses spoke and God answer him in thunder.” The word translated here as “thunder” can also be translated as voices, and often in scripture, the voice of God is described as thunder. So, it doesn’t take much imagination to see that the mighty wind on Pentecost was like the sound of the trumpet blast. Just as God descended upon Mt. Sinai with fire, the first temple experience of God and his people, now at Pentecost God came as fire again to descend upon the followers of Jesus, God’s new Temple. The voice of God that at Mt. Sinai that came as thunder now spoke through his people in words inexpressible and filled with glory. All this happening during a festival where the covenant first ratified at Mt. Sinai was renewed by the people. It was not hard for all those present at the Temple that day to see the similarities. Fifty days after sacrificing the Passover lamb the people of Israel would renew their covenant of Sinai. Here on this Pentecost though, fifty days after the sacrifice of the new Passover lamb called Jesus the people were receiving the new covenant long ago promised in the Psalms, the book of Jeremiah and the other prophets,
At Mount Sinai, the people received a gift of God, what they called his Torah, his teaching. Here on Pentecost the people also received a gift, the Holy Spirit who is the teacher.The Holy Spirit is God so we must not think of the Holy Spirit as an it as some people are want to do but rather understand that the Holy Spirit is God and is as God is always thought of addressed as a being a he. God as the Holy Spirit is sometimes the God we find hardest to figure out however there is much written in scripture that helps us to understand more about him. A good place to learn about the Holy Spirit surprisingly is the gospel of John. As you look for the Holy Spirit in John’s gospel you find that the Holy Spirit is the one who comes upon Jesus at his baptism. It is at the baptism of Jesus that John the Baptist hears his Heavenly Father tell him that Jesus would be the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. In the third chapter of John we learn that only those who are baptized by water and the Spirit are those who are born from above and thus able to enter into the kingdom of God. At the end of John’s sixth chapter, Jesus tells us that the Spirit is who gives us life as the flesh is no help at all. The words Jesus spoke are spirit and life. This is an important teaching to hold on to as we learn about the Holy Spirit. As we continue in John, we next hear Jesus teach on the Holy Spirit in the seventh chapter, where Jesus at the Temple during the Festival of Booths, cries out, “If anyone is thirsty let him come to me and drink. Believe in me for out of my heart flows living water. Now this he said about the Spirit whom those who believed in him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet present as Jesus was not yet glorified.” So, at Pentecost when the Spirit was poured out on the disciples we know that Jesus was glorified ascended to the right hand of his Heavenly Father.
Now all these verses in John tell us much about what the Holy Spirit does but it is not until the fourteenth chapter of John that Jesus explains just who the Holy Spirit is. There we hear Jesus tell his disciples first, if they loved him they would keep his commandments. Then Jesus said that he was going to ask his Heavenly Father and the Father would give them another Paraclete to be with them forever even the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it cannot see him or know him.” So, there are several things we can learn from this teaching. First, the Holy Spirit is only given to those who keep the commandments of Jesus. This is explained further in John’s first letter, the third chapter where we read that whoever keeps these commandments finds his residence in God and God finds his residence in them. By this we know that God has his residence in us by the Spirit he has given us.” And just what are these commandments that we need to do in order for the Holy Spirit to reside with us? There are two found in this same chapter of John’s first letter, that we believe in the name, the character, of Jesus to believe as Jesus believed, and to love one another, to love as Jesus loved. This is when we have separated ourselves from the world to be a dwelling place for God.
The second thing we learn from what Jesus teaches us in the fourteenth chapter of John is that the Holy Spirit is to be for us another Paraclete. I use the original Greek term because this is a word that is hard to translate. Sometimes we see the Paraclete translated as the Comforter or the Advocate. But Paraclete when broken down into the two Greek words which it is made up of we find that it is made up of the word, para, which means along side of like parallel lines run along side of each other and kletos, which means to call. What is unclear is just who does the calling? Is the Holy Spirit the God that we call upon or is the Holy Spirit the God who calls on us or is he both? When Jesus calls the Holy Spirit the Spirit of Truth what we have to remember is that the Greek word translated here as “truth” is also used elsewhere as faith or faithfulness. So, we could say that the Holy Spirit is the God who is the faithful presence of God that we can call upon and the faithful presence who will call upon us.
That the Holy Spirit is the God who calls to us, who speaks to us, is important for us to understand Pentecost as the day of God’s new covenant. We discover this in the fortieth Psalm where we read “In sacrifice and offering you have not delighted, but you have given me an open ear. Burnt offering and sin offering you have not required. Then, I said, Behold, I have come; in the scroll of the book it is written of me: I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart.” It is not a bunch of sacrifices that God is looking for. No, what God desires is people whose ears are open to hear his voice when he calls. This is when God’s law is within our hearts. This ties in with what Jeremiah was told by God, found in the thirty first chapter where we read, “This is the covenant that I will make with Israel after those days declares the Lord. I will put my law in them and I will write it on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people.’ This is the covenant that was given at Pentecost. God, the Holy Spirit, the God who comes along side and calls out to us showed up in a big way, and he spoke to people whose ears were open to what he had to say. These were people who believed in the name of Jesus and people who loved one another. This is what is meant by delighting in the will of God. This is why God could live with them and make his covenant with them, a covenant written on their hearts.
When we know that the Holy Spirit speaks to those who have open ears we can also understand what Jesus tells us will happen when the Holy Spirit comes. In the sixteenth chapter of John, Jesus teaches that the Holy Spirit comes he will convict the world concerning sin, righteousness and judgment. Concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; concerning righteousness because I go to the Father and you see me no more; concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged. Now, a lot of people get confused with this verse because it tells us that the Holy Spirit will convict the world and as we know the Holy Spirit doesn’t want anything to do with the world. So, how do we resolve the dilemma? The answer is that the Holy Spirit convinces the world through the lives of those who are attentive to his calling. We convince the world of their sin by living lives of faith in the name of Jesus. When this faith in God is active in our lives the world sees that living by putting faith in their flesh is missing the mark. Through a life lived by trusting God we show the world that a life that is marked by constant effort, worry and anxiety with no hope for the future is really no life at all.
We show the world that righteousness, the right way of living, is found in the way of Jesus who went to the cross trusting in the will of his Heavenly Father. Jesus yielded his life through the Spirit to show the world his great love for his Heavenly Father and for us. This is why he was raised from death and has ascended to his Father’s side in glory. This is our hope also and why we everyday must be a living sacrifice yielding our lives through the Holy Spirit showing our love for others and our Heavenly Father. This means that we must think nothing of ourselves but instead lay down our lives for others even if those others are our enemies.This is righteousness. Think how much the world needs convinced of this right now.
We also through a Holy Spirit filled life convince the world that the ruler of this world is judged. Satan rules this world through deceiving people that the best life is a life fulfilling our basest desires. When we live by and through the Holy Spirit we will have a life overflowing with the joy of eternity in our hearts no matter what our circumstances, and we will love others with abandon. When we live like this then the people of this world will be convinced that they have a choice, a judgment to be made as to how they can live. This choice can free them from being ruled by Satan to having Jesus be the Lord of their life.
The world right now is hurting, there is so much fear and pain and sorrow. But the Holy Spirit has come in power to empower us to convince this world that there is a way of life that can give this world the hope it is looking for. The question is this: will you allow the Holy Spirit who resides with you to convince you to live for him so that your life may be a life that can convince the world? This is what we see in the book of Acts. May we see it in our world, today.Amen.
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