THE FULFILMENT OF A PROMISE – ACTS 2:1-21

The day of Pentecost is a day of great significance for the Christian church as the celebration of the coming of the Spirit of God as promised by Jesus. But there is a rich history to Pentecost. The term Pentecost is not a term coined by those who first experienced the outpouring of the Spirit. 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. The universe has a pattern and a plan and while chaos can break through, the pattern continues and the plan unfolds. The Old Testament is a record of God’s action and interaction with a people whom He had called to be a light to the nations. This people were saved in an extraordinary way and that deliverance became an annual celebration known as the Passover. The fact that Jesus gave the disciples and the world a new interpretation of Passover is no coincidence. Passover was chosen as the time to put God’s plan of ultimate salvation into motion for the connection needed to be made between the first Passover and this new Passover when the angel of death would not just pass over once but would never again have the power to completely end the life of God’s people. The sacrifice of Jesus, God incarnate, would come to represent the blood of the lamb. Through his blood all who believed in him would not perish but be raised to eternal life just as he was raised to life. 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 God imparts to Pentecost a new significance. The festival that marked the granting of the law of God to the people now would also mark the deeper understanding of the law that Jesus taught and an experience of the Spirit of God such as they had never known before. I say an experience such as they had never known before because the Spirit of God was not a new phenomenon. In fact the spirit of God appears at the very beginning of Scripture in Genesis and there is a rich tradition of that Spirit throughout the writings. In fact 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 but 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; in other words, 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.

Something else we should be aware of when we consider the significance of Pentecost. Remember that since the exile of the people of Israel, only a handful returned to Jerusalem and Palestine. The majority either stayed in the land of their exile or spread to other parts of the known world. But Pentecost, like Passover, was a special time and one which would have been marked by a pilgrimage to the temple in Jerusalem. And so 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.

And so 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 humanity 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.  Peter 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.

And so the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost brings a deeper experience of God into the world. The Spirit is now more a part of our life with God and draws us closer so that we can know even more that our life is intimately connected with God. 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; through the sacrifice of Jesus he brought redemption to 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