A Deeper Experience of God – ACTS 2:1-21

Today marks the celebration of Pentecost for Christian congregations. But the term Pentecost is not one that came into existence in the book of Acts. Pentecost is the term used to refer to an ancient Jewish festival, and its roots go back to the time of Moses. It commemorates the giving of the Law including the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai.

When we believe that the New Testament is the only testament of God and those whom God has interacted with in history, we lose the thread of history that connects events of the past with those of the present. And so, it is with Pentecost. Yes, God was doing a new thing at Pentecost, but it was a new thing intimately connected with an old thing. Remember that there is no randomness when it comes to God. While chaos can and does break through, the pattern set by God continues and the plan unfolds in his time.

There is even a connection between Pentecost and Passover. Now we remember that the event of Passover marked the deliverance of the people from slavery in Egypt. As the people journeyed through the wilderness on their way to the Promised Land, they were given a code to guide them in their daily life and that happened fifty days after they started their journey through the wilderness – Pentecost.

Now God was definitely doing something new through Jesus.  As the Lamb of God whose sacrifice would overcome the power of death to separate us from life with God, it made perfect sense for Jesus to use the time of Passover to give a deeper meaning to such a significant event.

And just as God gave Passover a new significance through the death and resurrection of Jesus, so he imparts to Pentecost a new significance. The festival that marked the granting of the law of God to the people now would also mark a new experience of the Spirit of God – the Spirit sent to be the guide and sustainer of those who would follow the teachings of God as revealed through Jesus.

But while the Spirit of God appears to the disciples in a special way and comes with special gifts, it was not a new phenomenon. In fact, the Spirit of God has been present from the beginning of creation and there is a rich tradition of that Spirit throughout the Bible. Wisdom, knowledge, and ethics are all attributed to the work of the Spirit. The Spirit is personified as the female element of God. Throughout the Old Testament, the Spirit of God descends upon those called to leadership and is seen as the guide to all of them as they prophesied, taught, and ruled the people.

So once again we have nothing new under the sun. This is simply God taking what already had been a vital part of the people’s spiritual life and giving it a deeper significance and place. It had always been the hope of the prophets that the law of God would come to be written on the hearts of the people - that the external code of the law would become an internal code that would guide and direct all their actions and thoughts. The hope was that the Spirit of God would dwell within and be the constant companion of the people.

Pentecost, like Passover, was a special time and one which would have been marked by a pilgrimage to the temple in Jerusalem as people came to celebrate the giving of the Law. On that day, there would be Jews and gentiles from all over the known world. This became the perfect opportunity for God to let loose the Holy Spirit in a deeper and more powerful way.  The message of what God had done and was continuing to do in Christ could be proclaimed to the nations.  The message could be heard by a variety of people from a multitude of nations and that message carried back with them to the far corners of the known world.

It is recorded that the disciples began to speak in different tongues the message about Jesus Christ, his life, his death, and his resurrection. It is obvious from the text that the crowd knew that these disciples of Jesus were Galileans and not the kind of people who could have travelled to foreign places or been highly educated. But here they were speaking to them in their language. Naturally, there were those who rejected this as simply the babbling of drunkards, but Peter knew the truth and he boldly stepped forward and delivered the first sermon of the fledgling church. Drawing on the prophecies of Joel and the Psalms, the Spirit of God led him to reveal to the people that this was the outpouring of the Holy Spirit of God promised so long ago. It had come now because God had revealed his ultimate plan for the salvation of mankind and the Spirit of God was now to rest in the hearts and minds of the people to guide them into all truth and life.  He then went on to bring all the threads of the faith together and help them to see that God had sent the Messiah who had brought the ultimate salvation to the people – not just a salvation of the body such as happened at the exodus but a salvation of the body and soul.

The coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost is for us a deeper experience of God in our lives.   Yes, we still think for ourselves and act as people with free will, but we do so with the Spirit of God to guide us, to encourage us and to give us wisdom beyond what we might ever imagine.

Let us celebrate that this gift of the Holy Spirit to guide and strengthen us every day. AMEN