Acts 2:1-21 – When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2 And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3 Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
5 Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. 6 And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. 7 Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? 9 Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, 11 Cretans and Arabs– in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” 12 All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” 13 But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”
14 But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. 15 Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. 16 No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: 17 ‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. 18 Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. 19 And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. 20 The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. 21 Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’
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Psalm 104:24-35 – 24 O LORD, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. 25 Yonder is the sea, great and wide, creeping things innumerable are there, living things both small and great. 26 There go the ships, and Leviathan that you formed to sport in it. 27 These all look to you to give them their food in due season; 28 when you give to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are filled with good things. 29 When you hide your face, they are dismayed; when you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust. 30 When you send forth your spirit, they are created; and you renew the face of the ground. 31 May the glory of the LORD endure forever; may the LORD rejoice in his works– 32 who looks on the earth and it trembles, who touches the mountains and they smoke. 33 I will sing to the LORD as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have being. 34 May my meditation be pleasing to him, for I rejoice in the LORD.
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John 15:26-27 26 “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf. 27 You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning.
John 16:4-15 “I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you. 5 But now I am going to him who sent me; yet none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ 6 But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts. 7 Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. 8 And when he comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: 9 about sin, because they do not believe in me; 10 about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; 11 about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.
12 “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. 14 He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. 15 All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
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The arrival of the Holy Spirit – promised by Jesus in the gospel of John, and coming on the disciples as we heard in the book of Acts – took place 50 days after Easter, after Jesus’ resurrection.
For us in the church today, it’s the beginning of what some churches call “ordinary time” – no more changing of colors (except for Trinity Sunday), and no more big holidays until we get to Advent. The season of Pentecost is, for us – for the church – a time for growing in the faith, for studying scripture, and for growing as the Body of Christ, and that’s what we hope to be doing for most of the rest of this church year.
But today we celebrate the arrival of the third Person of the Trinity. Pentecost is sometimes called “the birthday of the church” and rightfully so.
Christianity of course grew out of the Jewish faith; and Pentecost is related to the Jewish holiday of the Festival of Weeks. This was a harvest festival, 50 days after Passover, and the focus of the celebration was on the giving of the Ten Commandments at Mt Sinai. At that time God revealed Godself and God’s plan to God’s people through the Ten Commandments. So it’s fitting that God reveals Godself even further on Pentecost through the sending of the Holy Spirit.
In Jewish history, the coming of the Holy Spirit was predicted by the prophet Joel, who wrote:
“it shall come to pass afterward, I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female slaves, in those days I will pour out my spirit.” (Joel 2:28-29)
Today, on Pentecost, we celebrate the fulfillment of God’s word as given by the prophet Joel.
So let’s dig into the story, starting with the events in Acts chapter two. As the scene opens, the disciples are gathered together in Jerusalem, in obedience to Jesus’ command on Ascension Day – when he told the disciples to “stay in Jerusalem until they have been clothed with power from on high.”
Where exactly in Jerusalem the disciples are, the Bible doesn’t say; but it seems from what’s described in this passage that they were somewhere near the Temple. We believe this is true because the house where they were gathered had crowds of people outside it – people from all over the known world who were going to the temple to worship. And the crowds passing on the street outside were close enough to hear what was happening in the house.
All of a sudden there was a loud sound like a rushing wind, and tongues of fire appeared, one flame resting on each person in the room. (Side note: in both Hebrew and Greek, the word “wind” is the same word as “Spirit” – so this truly is the arrival of the Holy Spirit.) The Spirit filled the disciples – both men and women – and they began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit led.
Nothing like this has ever happened in Scripture before. This was something totally new that God was doing. And these were not made-up languages: they were real foreign languages that the people on the street outside could hear and understand. The people outside – who were from all over – stopped and listened as they heard people praising God and telling about God’s great deeds of power in their own languages!
These people who were listening responded in a variety of ways – which is usually what happens when God’s truth is being shared. When Jesus taught, he was called a prophet by some people and a madman by others. When the apostle Paul taught, some people said he ‘had the voice of a god’ and other people tried to stone him. God’s word always bring different reactions; and those reactions say more about the people listening than they do about the message. God’s word is truth, and God’s word reveals hearts.
In this case, on that first Pentecost Day, in the crowd outside the room, some people were curious. They asked, “What does this mean?” They wanted to know more. Some people were amazed; some people were troubled; some were confused; some poked fun and said ‘aaaah, they’re just drunk’. If the first disciples got this wide a variety of reactions to the sharing of the gospel, we should not be surprised when we also get a variety of reactions to God’s word when we share it. God’s word reveals hearts.
At this point, Peter rises to the occasion and preaches the very first Christian sermon. He tells the crowd: the people you are hearing are not drunk – it’s too early in the morning to be drinking. What you hear is the coming of the Holy Spirit that the prophet Joel predicted (as we read a few moments ago). Peter quotes Joel’s prophecy, and then he continues with more of what Joel said:
“in those days I will pour out my spirit… I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” (Joel 2:30-32)
So the very first Christian sermon ever preached, was preached on the second chapter of Joel, and the message was: “The Day of the Lord is coming!” And the Day of the Lord is not something pleasant in this message: it is darkness and blood and a dreadful day. But “all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
So if we think our days are dark… that the times we live in are dreadful… the Day of the Lord is coming, and it won’t be easy. BUT “all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
You might say that this was the first-ever altar call. And BTW the word “all” in this verse means “all”. All who call on the name of the Lord will be saved. Everyone, no exceptions.
Side note: Miracles alone are not enough to lead people to faith. Hearing people speaking in tongues caught the crowd’s attention – but it didn’t make believers out of them. It is the word of God spoken that brings people to faith. It is the word of God alone that has the power to change lives, and to save people from the troubles in this world.
And by the power of the Holy Spirit, and by the word of God preached by Peter, three thousand people were added to the church that day. In the morning there had only been a few dozen members of the church; now there were three thousand.
So for us today, what does all this mean? For God’s people as a body of believers, what is God’s word for us today?
First, many theologians have pointed out – rightly so – that Pentecost reverses the curse of the Tower of Babel back in the book of Genesis. Many of us remember that story from Sunday School. This took place back before Abraham, before Moses, before Israel, in the very early days of human civilization. The book of Genesis says:
[At that time] the whole earth had one language and the same words. 2 And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. [And they learned to make bricks] 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” 5 The Lord came down to see the city and the tower… 6 And the Lord said, “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” 8 So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 9 Therefore it was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth, and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.” (Genesis 11:1-9, selected)
This is a story that’s meant to explain why there are so many different peoples and nations and languages on the planet. But from a spiritual point of view, the problem God was dealing with was basically human cockiness. The people say, “Let us build for ourselves… let us make a name for ourselves…” – that’s what the people were saying. Of course, God’s word and God’s law had not been given yet, so people didn’t know right from wrong, at least not very clearly. So to keep them from going too far too fast – and to keep them from imagining it was even possible to build one’s way to heaven – God created different languages and divided the people up into different groups.
But here, today, on Pentecost, that curse is reversed. By the power of the Holy Spirit, the disciples are speaking in tongues, and all the people are hearing the same message in their own languages. What’s more, the crowd that is listening on that first Pentecost day is extremely diverse: migrants from all over the world, men and women, slave and free, from north and south and east and west, every race and tongue – everyone heard God’s word in their own languages, and the new church members represented all these peoples and groups. What’s more, in that new church – as Luke records in the book of Acts – “all the people held all their possessions in common, and gave to anyone as was needed.” No one lacked for anything in the early church. Everyone was provided for. So the Spirit brought a re-unification of people that hasn’t been seen since before the Tower of Babel.
Second, Pentecost brings to reality what Jesus taught in John’s gospel. Jesus said that this gift coming from heaven would be a paraclete – a word whose meanings include “comforter”, “helper”, “advocate” (that is, in the legal sense), or “intercessor”. This is what the Holy Spirit does. The Spirit testifies to the truth of Jesus as the Son of God; and the Spirit’s presence will be better for us – in this life – than Jesus actually being physically here on earth. As Jesus remarked, he was very limited when he was here physically in this world. But now, having gone back to God, Jesus can send the Spirit to guide all believers everywhere at all times. The Holy Spirit will guide us into truth, and the Spirit will give all glory to Jesus.
Side note of course: if all the glory is going to Jesus, it is not going to human beings – which is one way, when we’re listening to celebrities, politicians, religious leaders, business leaders, newscasters – powerful people of any kind – when they talk about God or Christianity, if they are promoting themselves, they’re fakes. Charlatans glorify themselves; people who speak the truth, who speak by the power of the Spirit, give glory to God and not to themselves. People who speak by the power of the Holy Spirit give all glory to Jesus.
Third, the Holy Spirit gathers the church – the body of believers – and opens opportunities for ministry. The church can exist without a building, and in fact it did for many hundreds of years, and still does in countries where it’s illegal to be Christian. It is the Spirit who teaches us to believe in Jesus; it is the Spirit who builds the household of God; and it is the Spirit who leads us in fulfilling God’s mission and God’s calling. The church, gathered by the Holy Spirit, is at once both simpler and more profound than anything the world has to offer.
When I think of Pentecost, of the movement of the Holy Spirit in our times, I often think back to the Jesus People movement back in the early 1970s. One of the very first Christian rock bands, back in the days before there was such a thing as a ‘Christian rock band’, was called 2nd Chapter of Acts (appropriately for Pentecost). One of the singers in the band describes on her website how she came to believe in Jesus (and I’m shortening this for time):
She had met a few of the Jesus People, and she wrote:
“These Jesus People… claimed to be filled with the Holy Spirit. I wanted the same Spirit to fill my life. A group of Jesus People gathered around me… praying for me and singing in the Spirit. Suddenly I had a vision of heaven. I saw Jesus. I loved him so much! I started toward him… but I could not touch him… because of my sin. Somehow I knew I could never earn His favor… I kept thinking “how could he love me?”
And she fell asleep that night asking, “How could God love me?” and she woke up the next morning saying, “How can he love me so much?” She had come to faith in her sleep that night! The next day she shared these words with her friends: “All I know is that I love Jesus. And Jesus loves me.”
These are simple words of a new faith, but a profound experience of the Spirit. The Jesus People back then had no degrees in theology; they had no idea from a scriptural point of view what they were doing; and most of what they knew they learned from a friend while sitting cross-legged on someone’s living room floor.
But the power of the Holy Spirit was there – and they welcomed into the faith the hurting, and the hungry, and the poor, and the addicted… and people of different races and nationalities and backgrounds – much like the first Christians on Pentecost welcomed people from all over the known world. And if these kids had any theology it was learned from Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount.
It was a simpler time back then. Was the movement perfect? No. Were there issues? Yes. Were there people who hung out just to make a profit selling love beads? Yes. But on the whole, at that time, this movement of faith was sweet and simple and real, and very much led by the Holy Spirit. And I have a feeling that we as a society may be on the edge of a movement of the Spirit like that again. I’m keeping eyes open for it.
With that thought in mind, let me close with words from one of the most famous converts of that era – Bob Dylan. We don’t hear as much from him these days – he’s now 82 years old – but he wrote a song a few decades ago that’s basically a prayer. It’s called “What Can I Do For You?” and these are the words:
“You have given everything to me
What can I do for You?
You have given me eyes to see
What can I do for You?“You have laid down Your life for me
What can I do for You?
You have explained every mystery
What can I do for You?“Pulled me out of bondage and You made me renewed inside
Filled up a hunger that had always been denied
Opened up a door no man can shut and You opened it up so wide…
What can I do for You?”
On this Pentecost may this be our prayer. AMEN.
Pentecost – May 18, 2024
Getting Started 