What's So Important About Pentecost?

Introduction

Last week we heard Pastor Umbarger lament that the Ascension gets forgotten in favor of Christmas and Easter. Well this week it’s my turn to grind the ax; I think that this day, Pentecost, gets shortchanged as a holiday. For many Christians throughout history, the feast of Pentecost has been considered one of the most important celebrations of the church year, right up there with the big two. In fact it’s probably even more important than Ascension day. In all seriousness, Ascension and Pentecost go hand-in-hand, because Pentecost is the day when Jesus sends “the promise of his father” that he promised when he ascended.

So why do we forget about Pentecost so easily? Why don’t we understand this holiday and why it’s so important? Maybe part of it is because we’re Lutherans, and we sometimes get so busy talking about the work of Jesus that we just forget to talk about the work of the Spirit. Maybe it’s partly because we’re a bunch of modern individualists and we want to focus on our individual, personal relationship to Jesus that we don’t understand the importance of the church: the assembly of God’s people.

And that’s what Pentecost is all about: the Holy Spirit and the Church. Pentecost was the moment when Jesus started the ministry of his church in this world in these last days by empowering them with his Holy Spirit. That’s what I want us to remind ourselves of today: that without the Holy Spirit’s work of calling, gathering, enlightening, and sanctifying his church, no one could believe in the Lord Jesus Christ or come to him. We need to remember why Pentecost is so important.

The Spirit in the OT: Moses’ Wish and Joel’s Prophecy

To understand why Pentecost is crucial to God’s plan of salvation, we need to understand something about what things were like before Pentecost; what the Holy Spirit was up to in the OT. The Holy Spirit of God or the Spirit of Yahweh actually appears more frequently than you might think in the OT, but his role among God’s people was a little different in that time.

One thing I should probably make clear up front is that He most certainly was still creating and sustaining faith in people. That hasn’t changed. Because human nature is corrupted by sin, no one can trust God and his promises without the Holy Spirit changing their hearts and minds and bringing them to repentance.

However, when it comes to the Holy Spirit “filling” someone or “rushing upon” them in a tangible way, this only happened to certain people and usually only for a limited time, and for specific tasks. The Holy Spirit in the OT is all about God’s saving presence. That saving presence appeared in a fiery pillar of cloud that led the people of Israel out of Egypt, and then later that glory cloud and presence took up its permanent residence in the Holy of Holies in the tabernacle. So when the Holy Spirit would empower a certain person with his gifts, it was always for a task associated with that saving presence. He rushed upon kings like David or judges like Samson so they could accomplish great acts of salvation for the people of Israel. He filled the prophets so that they could see visions of God’s presence and carry messages from God himself. And he empowered the priests whose job it was to approach the holy presence of God in the temple. Leaders, prophets, and priests.

Moses was a little of all of that. He had been the leader God chose to help save the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt. He spoke with God face to face in the tabernacle like a priest. And he brought messages from God to the people like a prophet. But he was alone. And he was exhausted. That’s what our OT lesson is about. Moses was fed up with the people of Israel and tired of carrying the burden of being their prophet-leader-priest guy all the time. He wanted help. So God told Moses to get those 70 elders of the people, bring them to the place of God’s presence, and God took his Spirit that was on Moses and placed it on those elders as well so they could share the burden of Moses’ responsibility. And for a short time they started prophesying: speaking words from God like Moses did. Moses must have been relieved to have help. But at the end of the text, we hear him wish for more. Yes, it was nice that now there were seventy other people equipped for service to God. But that was still only 70 in a people of several thousand, and still only the “elders,” the most important and respected leaders. Moses says, “Would that all the LORD’s people were prophets, that the LORD would put his Spirit on them!” It’s great that faithful Israelites trust in their God. But if only they could approach him and know him face to face like I do. If only they could participate in his plan of salvation and speak his words like I do. If only. Moses was yearning for something even better.

Well a few hundred years later, God’s Holy Spirit would fill the prophet Joel and inspire him to turn Moses’ wish into a full-fledged prophecy: God says that the day is coming when he will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, all kinds of people. Not just kings or elders or priests, but all God’s people: young and old, men and women, even the lowest parts of society. All God’s people would be equipped to serve in the saving presence of their God. They would know God face to face and proclaim his word of salvation. That was what Moses was longing for, and God promised it was going to happen.

Pentecost

God Empowers his New Temple

That was the promise that God was keeping on the day of Pentecost. After Jesus atoned for the sin of the world on the cross, rose again victorious over death, and ascended to heaven to fill all things, a new era in God’s plan of salvation was beginning. Jesus was about to send the promise of his Father, the Holy Spirit. The saving presence of God was no longer concentrated in the temple building in Jerusalem. The tearing of the veil when Jesus died made that clear. God was about to build a new temple: his people.

Holy Spirit, the fire celestial, who on Pentecost came as foretold, To descend from on high, and the Church occupy as the cloud filled the temple of old.

So as Jesus’ few faithful followers were gathered together, a great noise like a wind filled the building just like the cloud had filled the tabernacle, and the fire of God’s presence distributed itself on each one of them, empowering them to speak God’s word in other languages, to prophesy like those 70 elders in Moses’ day, and to tell others about God’s mighty works, his plan of salvation.

If you’ve been through confirmation class, you've probably heard that Jesus is a prophet, priest, and king. He was the one who was fully empowered by the Holy Spirit to fill all of those roles, even more than Moses did. But now that Jesus was ruling the world, he wanted his people, the “body of Christ” to be a “royal priesthood” too. The church would have the mission of confronting the world with God’s prophetic word of judgment and his promises of salvation. They were going to fulfill the prediction Jesus made at his ascension: both repentance and forgiveness of sins would be preached in his name. So God empowered the members of his church for that task with his Holy Spirit, the same Spirit that filled Jesus himself.

As the disciples went out into Jerusalem and probably into the temple court itself to confront the people of Israel with the message of Jesus, the Jews in the city were seeing something new. These were not priests, nor respected leaders of Israel. They were blue-collar fishermen, former tax collectors, and probably women like Jesus’ mother Mary and Mary Magdalene, people who would have been from the lower classes of society in those days. All of them were filled with the saving presence of the Holy Spirit, and prophesying like the elders of Israel had done so long ago.

Reactions to the Spirit’s Work

No wonder that the people hearing it were totally bewildered and some of them scoffed at it and dismissed them as being drunk. This was something they weren’t expecting or prepared for. It’s also the natural response of the world to the work that the Holy Spirit does to save and transform people and to build his church. Even Christians are susceptible to this. We have to be careful that we don’t reduce the Holy Spirit to being just a theoretical idea rather than a real person who is active in our lives, who makes us Christians, and gives us real gifts to enable us to carry out the mission of Jesus’ church. It’s easy for Christians who confess that they believe in the Holy Spirit to simply forget that he is living in them each day like he lived in the temple of old and empowering them to speak about the things that Jesus has done to save them. I know that I don’t think often enough about the fact that I am a piece of God’s temple in this world or about how the Holy Spirit’s saving presence might be working through me. Sometimes I’m even tempted to scoff when Christians see God working powerfully in their lives to transform them, and to chalk it up to some worldly explanation, like the mockers at Pentecost chalking the Spirit’s work up to “new wine”. We all need to remind ourselves that God’s Holy Spirit is very real and very present with us in our minds and in our lives, through the Gospel of Jesus and the ministry of the Church.

The Spirit’s Purpose

But Peter speaks on behalf of all the disciples to defend their ministry and refute the charge that they’re just drunk. It’s only 9 in the morning after all! They haven’t had time to get into the new wine yet! On the contrary, Peter claims that today Joel’s prophecy is starting to be fulfilled. These are the last days, the day of the Lord, when God is shaking up this old creation and preparing to make it new. God’s holy temple presence is about to burst out and expand to every corner of this world through his people. “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Hosts, his glory is filling the heavens and the earth.” And so all of God’s people have to be equipped with God’s Spirit to minister in his presence: sons and daughters, young and old, even slaves have the fire of God’s Spirit placed upon them.

And what is the result, what is the purpose of this outpouring of God’s Spirit? Acts 2:21 “And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.’” That is the most important thing that the Holy Spirit empowers his people to do. Call on the name of the Lord in faith. And you know that for Peter, calling on the name of the Lord means to call on Jesus. That is the purpose of the ministry of the Church, that people would call out to Jesus and say “Lord, save me!” And how glorious is it to have the promise that he will. Everyone who calls on Jesus will be saved. That means you. If your sins and doubts have you thinking you couldn’t possibly be filled with the Spirit of God, you can still call on Jesus. Because the Holy Spirit has called you by the Gospel and enlightened you with his gifts, you can call on your Lord Jesus to save you from the judgment coming on the world in these last days. We call on him because he called us first.

Conclusion

Pentecost was a unique moment in the church’s history. It was the inauguration of God’s New Testament people, and many things have changed in the almost 2000 years since then. I can’t promise that you are going to have exactly the same role or the same kinds of gifts that those first Christians had. You may not see the Spirit rest on your head like fire and you may not be able to speak in languages you’ve never learned. But I can promise that the same Holy Spirit that filled the apostles is the same Spirit that filled you at your baptism. I can promise that he will equip you with whatever gifts you need in this time and place to declare the mighty works that God has done for you in Jesus. You are still a part of the same people of God, the same temple of God that has been expanding through the world. You are a royal priest who gets to minister in the saving presence of God himself. And you get to participate in the saving works of God by inviting others to call on the name of Jesus and be saved. And that’s why Pentecost is so important. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.