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

Today marks the celebration of Pentecost for Christian congregations. While it is very much a celebration of the coming of the Spirit of God to the disciples, Pentecost did not first appear as an event recorded in the New Testament. Pentecost is an ancient Jewish festival. Its roots go back to the time of Moses and commemorates the giving of the Law which included the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai.

So often when we view any one event in isolation, 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. There is a pattern and a plan and while chaos can break through, the pattern continues, and the plan unfolds.

There is also a connection between Pentecost and Passover. Passover marked the deliverance of the people from slavery in Egypt. As the people rescued by God, 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 doing something new through Jesus and so it was only natural that the people receive a new way of looking at both Passover and Pentecost.  Passover was chosen as the time to put God’s plan of ultimate salvation into motion for now the angel of death would not just pass over once but would never again be able to separate the people from God. To the eyes of the world, we perish; but we remain alive to God. We pass into his care and await the fulfilment of all things with the coming of a new heaven and a new earth.

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 appears 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 – something which I am sure all the ladies would attest to. 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 were Jews and gentile converts 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 have the Spirit of God to rely on to guide us, to encourage us and to give us wisdom beyond what we might ever imagine.

Remember this day that God has had a plan for this world and its people from the very beginning. In the beginning he created the world and all that is in it and one day he will redeem this world and all that is in it. Let us celebrate that we have been granted the gift of faith and the promise of new and eternal life through Christ and let the Holy Spirit guide us and strengthen us every day. AMEN