Word of Salvation – Vol. 53 No.19 – May 2008

 

The Holy Spirit Comes on the Day of Pentecost

 

A Pentecost Sermon by Rev John De Hoog on Acts 2:1-13

Scripture Reading:  Leviticus 23:1-21

Suggested Singing:  BoW 32; 235; 339; 351

 

Dear Congregation.

The Day of Pentecost was the day the first Christian sermon was preached. It was the beginning of the new age of the Spirit in which we now live. It was the day the believers were equipped for their task as witnesses to King Jesus. It was the day the church was baptised with the Holy Spirit. It was the day of the first great revival. It is a very important day, a red letter day in the church’s history.

Today, three questions. First, Why the Day of Pentecost? Second, what do the signs of Pentecost point us to? Third, what should our reaction be?

First, why the Day of Pentecost of all days? Sounds like a strange question, doesn’t it? We say “Pentecost,” and we automatically think of Acts 2, don’t we? Perhaps some of us have the impression that the Day of Pentecost started here in Acts 2. Not so. Pentecost was a Jewish feast day.

Here is a Jewish feast day that dates back to the days of Moses. As a feast day it is nearly 1500 years old on this day recorded here in Acts Chapter 2.

You can read about the feast days in Leviticus 23. The first great feast mentioned in that chapter is the Passover. The Passover commemorated the first Passover, when God delivered Israel out of Egypt, when Israel became a nation.

The tradition in Jerusalem was for the Passover lamb to be displayed to the people four days before the Passover, and then the lamb was killed on Passover eve.

Four days before this Passover , Jesus rides into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey. The Lamb of God, the ultimate Passover Lamb, is displayed to the people. And on Passover eve, when the Lamb is slaughtered, Jesus is crucified. So the first great feast of Leviticus 23, the Passover, is fulfilled by the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.

The second feast mentioned in Leviticus 23 is the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which begins immediately after the Passover. During that feast an offering of the first fruits of the barley harvest was made to God. This was to be done the day after the Sabbath which fell within the festival period. Again, Jesus fulfils the meaning of the festival. On that very day, the day after the Sabbath, on the day of the offering of the first fruits, he rises from the grave, “the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Cor 15:20).

Leviticus goes on. Now the Jews were to count off fifty days. On the day after the seventh Sabbath they were to present more offerings to God. It was another feast day. This was the fiftieth day, the Day of Pentecost. On this day a sheaf of the first fruits of the wheat harvest was to be presented to God as an offering. The first fruits was presented to God to show that the whole harvest belonged to God and came from him.

So on this day of the celebration of the harvest, Jesus Christ baptises the church with the Holy Spirit. On this Day of Pentecost, 3000 people believe and are saved. The New Testament harvest has begun. You see, there is here perfect fulfilment of the Old Testament pictures, all worked out in Jesus Christ.

What should we make of this? Why does God do it this way? Why does he tie the great redemptive acts of history — the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the coming of the Holy Spirit — to a set of 1500 year old Jewish feast days?

I can think of three reasons. The first is that God demonstrates in this way that he is in charge, in complete control over these events. The feast days were not just 1500 year old Jewish traditions. God had commanded those feast days. God had given his people these special days to celebrate his goodness to them, and they were full of rich meaning even before Christ came. He designed these days to develop faith and gratitude in the hearts of his people. But he also had in mind from eternity that Jesus would come and do his work for the salvation of his people. And he planned from the very beginning the order and sequence and timing of the feast days and their perfect fulfilment in Jesus Christ. Be in awe of this great Sovereign God who is in charge of history!

The second reason God does it this way is because the message of salvation in Jesus Christ is first of all for the Jews. The message is first for the Jews, then for the Gentiles. The Great Commission is to begin in Jerusalem and all Judea, before it goes out to Samaria and to the ends of the earth. Jews must realise that Jesus is the Messiah, the focus of God’s saving plans and purposes. He is the one who demonstrates the true meaning of their feast days.

There is a third thing to say about God using Jewish feast days to structure his saving work. It is an illustration of the way God stoops down and speaks his message of salvation to sinful, weak human beings. It’s exciting and satisfying and rich to think of Jesus as the Passover lamb, Jesus as the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep, the Holy Spirit as the first fruits of our inheritance in Christ. These pictures enrich our faith and feed our gratitude.

God speaks our language. He shapes the message of salvation to our ears, to our weakness. Praise and thank God for this! Praise God for his grace in bending to us in Christ for our eternal benefit!

Let’s go back to Acts 2, to the events of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit comes with three signs: a sound like the blowing of a violent wind, a sight like tongues of fire resting on the disciples, and speaking in tongues.

So we come to our second question. What do the signs of Pentecost point us to?

The first sign is a sound like the blowing of a violent wind. The sound comes suddenly, it comes from heaven and it fills the house where they were sitting. We mustn’t think of an actual wind, as if the house was filled with a violent rushing wind, it was the sound of a violent wind. Here was a perfect sign that the Holy Spirit had come. Right from the start there could be no mistake.

In both Hebrew and Greek, the word for “wind” and the word for “spirit” is the same. Ezekiel had prophesied of the wind of the Spirit as the breath of God blowing over the dry bones and filling them with new life. (Find it in Ezekiel 37.) The Jews were waiting for this wind of God’s Spirit. Then the Messianic Age would come; God would rule with his people over the whole earth. Now the wind of the Spirit comes, and none of the disciples can mistake what it means. The Holy Spirit has come!

The second sign is the sight of tongues of fire separating and coming to rest on each one of them. Imagine the sight. Imagine seeing a tongue of fire separating away from others and coming to rest on your head. Imagine how your scalp would tingle. “What will happen when it touches my head?”

Again, the meaning of the sign cannot be mistaken. Fire was a well-known symbol of God’s presence. Remember the burning bush in Exodus 3, the pillar of fire that guided Israel at night, the consuming fire on Mt Sinai. God is here . The Holy Spirit has come, and here is a special sign to show what has happened.

Why does a tongue of fire separate and come to rest on each one of the 120 disciples gathered together in that room? The language here is interesting. Literally, it means “they saw tongues of fire being distributed, and it sat on each one of them.” Tongues of fire (plural), but it (singular) — the fire — sat on each one of them.

There is one Spirit, and he indwells every single believer individually. All believers receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, the one Spirit. See how Paul emphasises this in 1 Corinthians 12:13, “For we were all baptised by one Spirit into one body — whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free — and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.” In Christ there is no Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, we are all one before God, and we all receive the Holy Spirit.

What about the third sign, that of speaking in tongues. Verse 4, “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.” And then Luke records the nations from which the Jews who witnessed this scene had come, and makes it plain that the believers were given the ability to speak in distinct languages that they could not possibly have known themselves.

What were the believers saying as they spoke in these other languages? Luke says they were “declaring the wonders of God.” And now they are doing it in the languages of “all the nations under heaven.”

What was the purpose of this sudden ability to speak in other languages? It wasn’t necessary for preaching the gospel. Greek was nearly universal in the Roman Empire, and all Jews spoke Aramaic. It is most likely that Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost was in Aramaic.

The purpose of this miracle was like the purpose of all miracles surrounding the ministry of Jesus Christ — to prove the reality of God’s work and presence, and to point to Jesus Christ as the Son of God, the one in whom you must believe in order to be saved. Understand this sign and see Jesus Christ.

Signs are signs because they point to something. How did this sign of many languages point to Christ? In two ways.

First, the amazing miracle of many languages get the people ready to hear Peter’s sermon. The people cannot get over what has happened. Verse 12, “Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, What does this mean?’” The people are utterly at a loss. They are perfectly prepared now to hear Peter’s explanation of what has happened.

Second, this miracle of many languages points to a new unity in the Spirit that now breaks down all national and language barriers. True, all the hearers on the Day of Pentecost were Jews. This is not the beginning of the Gentile mission. The Gentile mission only begins in Acts 10 when Peter visits Cornelius. And yet, they are Jews from “every nation under heaven,” as Luke puts it in verse 5.

These witnesses of the events of Pentecost were the best possible witnesses. Luke tells us they were “God-fearing” Jews. They were Jews who knew and believed in the prophecies, Jews who were serious about their faith and relationship with God, Jews who like Simeon were looking for the consolation of Israel. They were Jews who could understand the truly Biblical fulfilment of Jewish hopes. They were all Jews, and yet they represented every nation under heaven.

These Jews represent the ends of the earth, the ultimate goal of the Great Commission.

Just before he left his disciples, Jesus had said, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.” Now the representatives of the ends of the earth are here in Jerusalem, and are witnessing the initial fulfilment of this very promise — they are witnessing the beginning of the ends-of-the-earth spread of the gospel.

In Acts 10, when Cornelius and his household become the first Gentile believers in the gospel, what is the sign that they, Gentiles, are also now included? They speak in tongues! Peter recognises that they are now part of the church, he recognises that they too have been baptised with the Holy Spirit, because the same sign is repeated. The sign of speaking in unknown languages in Acts 2 point us to the fact that all racial, national and linguistic boundaries are broken down between people who belong to Jesus Christ.

So what do the three signs on the Day of Pentecost point us to? They are signs to point us to Jesus Christ, to show us that Jesus Christ has done an amazing thing on this Day of Pentecost. He has baptised the church with the Holy Spirit.

Think of what it means. In the relationship between God and mankind, God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit have always, from eternity, been on the “God” side of the relationship. But 2000 years ago, earth time, God the Father sent his only Son to live for thirty-three years on the “mankind” side of this relationship. God the Son became a man, he took on a human nature. And when God the Son had finished his earthly work, he ascended back to heaven to the Father’s side. And then, ten days later, he sent God the Holy Spirit to come and be on the “mankind” side of the relationship until the very end of time.

Since the Day of Pentecost, every single Christian has been baptised with the Holy Spirit. If you are a Christian, then you have received this amazing gift. You have the Holy Spirit, God Himself, as a person, as the great Person in your life. And God has given this gift to every single one of his people — Australian, Dutch, Japanese, Bengali, Afghan, Sudanese refugee or member of the British royalty. The praise of God is spoken today in many times more languages than those spoken by the believers in the Day of Pentecost. The tongues as of fire have continued to separate, and the fire has descended on each believer.

Now the third question. What should be our reaction to these events? How should we respond right now to what we have seen? Here we are in this building this morning. What effect should the facts of Pentecost have on us right now?

Let’s think about ourselves right now. This building is full of immortal people. People who have eternal life. You who have believed in Jesus Christ have the Holy Spirit indwelling you. The tongues of fire have, unseen, separated and come to rest on each one who is a believer. My message has been from the Bible, this book which is the very Word of God, breathed out by the Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ is here, unseen but in our midst. The Holy Spirit is brooding over us as a congregation. Angels are watching us. Heaven and hell are awaiting the outcome. What will be the outcome?

You who are believers, rejoice and praise God! You have shared in the gift of Pentecost, you have been baptised with the Holy Spirit, you have been given eternal life. You are immortal. The Holy Spirit is the first fruits and the guarantee of all the spiritual riches you will inherit through Jesus Christ. Praise God for the glories of all his blessings.

You who are unbelievers, come and join us! Think what is at stake! It is a matter of death or life. Think who is here and who is watching right now! What should be your reaction? On the Day of Pentecost three thousand heeded Peter’s sermon and were added to the church. You can join that three thousand. Repent and believe in Jesus Christ, and you will be saved.

Amen.