The Outpouring of the Spirit

You’ve been climbing since dawn.

The sun is already bright on the white stone of the city, and the air smells of dust, animals, and fresh bread. Pilgrims crowd the road ahead of you—families with baskets of grain, men singing psalms, children half-running to keep up. Someone is playing a pipe. Someone else is trying to negotiate the price of a goat.

It is Shavuot—Pentecost—and Jerusalem feels as if the whole world has come home at once.

The city hums. You’ve heard rumors all week.

Jesus of Nazareth—crucified at Passover—followers still in the city—talk of visions—empty tomb stories told in quick, hushed voices as though the words were hot. You are not sure what to make of any of it.

You’re near the southern steps of the Temple when it happens.

At first, it’s just a sound—low and distant, like wind rushing through a canyon. But there is no wind. The air is still. The sound grows, fills the space, echoes off stone colonnades and the great walls. People stop talking. A jug slips from someone’s hand and shatters.

You turn to see a crowd is gathering around a group of Galileans—ordinary people, easily recognized by their accents and their rough clothes. Their faces are alight with something you cannot name—joy, fear, certainty, all at once—and they are speaking. Loudly. Urgently.

And then you realize what is wrong.

They are speaking your language.

Not the clumsy second language most pilgrims use, but your home tongue, the one you heard as a child in the market, the one your mother used when she whispered to you at night. You hear words about God’s deeds and promises, spoken in the sound and rhythm of home.

Others feel it too. You see it on their faces—the shock, the recognition, the tightening in the throat that comes when something pierces straight through you.

Someone near you laughs and says they’re drunk.

Someone else shakes their head and doesn’t finish the sentence.

One of them steps forward.

A fisherman, by the look of him. Sun-marked skin. Strong hands. He raises his voice and the murmuring quiets. You don’t know his name yet—later you’ll hear people call him Peter.

He speaks like the festival teachers you have heard before—Scripture pouring out of him, the prophet Joel, the psalms of David, words about promise and fulfillment. But there is no distance in his voice. No “once, long ago.” Everything he says feels like now.

He talks about Jesus.

About his death.

About his life again.

About how God has acted and how the world cannot go on exactly as it was before. His words are not polished, but they are alive, and something in them goes straight into you like a blade and a balm together.

Around you, people nod, weep, argue in fierce whispers.

“What should we do?” someone calls out, and the question hangs in the summer air because it is your question too.

Then movement everywhere.

People streaming down the steps toward the ritual baths carved in stone beside the Temple. You know these pools—mikva’ot used for purification before entering the courts—but now they are full of people stepping down into the water and coming up again laughing, crying, holding one another like relatives who have just found each other after a long time apart.

The city that already felt crowded now feels charged.

You hear singing.

You see strangers sharing food.

You watch people sell things and press the money into the hands of the poor without counting it twice. You see little groups sitting under the shade of porticoes, breaking bread, praying, speaking quietly about what has happened and what it might mean.

And through it all, ordinary life goes on—animals bawl, children chase one another up stone alleys, priests in white linen continue the festival rites—but it feels as if a fault line has opened under the surface of the day.

You cannot say exactly what changed.

Only that something did.

And as evening comes and lamps are lit across the city, Jerusalem glows softly like a field of scattered stars, and you realize that tomorrow there will be sacrifices and prayers and buying and selling just as before—but nothing will ever be quite the same.

What Happened at Pentecost?

Acts 2:1-13

50th day after Passover. 7 sevens +1 Agricultural Feast- completion of the early harvest Memorial Feast- giving of the Law through Moses.

God Comes in Fire

The imagery of fire and wind or storm is used several places in the old testament narrative to picture the presence of the Lord.

Instead of Fear, God gave Israel a Fire Exodus 13:17–22 “When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near. For God said, “Lest the people change their minds when they see war and return to Egypt.” But God led the people around by the way of the wilderness toward the Red Sea. And the people of Israel went up out of the land of Egypt equipped for battle. ….And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night. The pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night did not depart from before the people.”

The Purposes of Pentecost

The Holy Spirit was given at Pentecost, but why did the disciples have to wait until that day? (significance of the day)

Completed the Picture of Mt. Sinai

Exodus 19:16–21 “On the morning of the third day there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast, so that all the people in the camp trembled. Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they took their stand at the foot of the mountain. Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the Lord had descended on it in fire. The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled greatly. And as the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him in thunder. The Lord came down on Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain. And the Lord called Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up. And the Lord said to Moses, “Go down and warn the people, lest they break through to the Lord to look and many of them perish.”

testimony of fire and storm

testimony of the Law

2. Inaugurated the New Covenant

testimony of fire and “wind”

testimony of Holy Spirit Power

Jeremiah 31:33–34 “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.””

2 Corinthians 3:3 “And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”

3. God begins to redeem the broken languages of Genesis 11

beginning in Acts 2

ending in Rev. 21 (7- Great Multitude. tribe, tongue, nation)

Why does it matter?

2 Chronicles 7:1–3 “As soon as Solomon finished his prayer, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the Lord filled the temple. And the priests could not enter the house of the Lord, because the glory of the Lord filled the Lord’s house. When all the people of Israel saw the fire come down and the glory of the Lord on the temple, they bowed down with their faces to the ground on the pavement and worshiped and gave thanks to the Lord, saying, “For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.””

God Himself is the provision for His own promises (fire for fear)

Our God is a consuming fire

Hebrews 12:28–29 “28 Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, 29 for our God is a consuming fire.”

God is self-sufficient. (banished priests) He does not NEED anyone to worship Him, but He is worthy of worship and gracious to allow us the privilege.

God can overcome any boundary

language, ethnicity, circumstance

This same Spirit lives in the hearts of believers today

to enlighten

to empower

to purify

to give life, wisdom, resources

to commune with the triune God and with fellow believers

Northwood Community Bible Church needs a genuine Holy Spirit Revival

not merely seen in miraculous signs and wonders, but in changed lives, hearts of fire, repented sin, purposeful living, generous giving, restored relationships, and surrender to God for the sake of His glory.