Pentecost

Acts 2:1–4 NLT

On the day of Pentecost all the believers were meeting together in one place. Suddenly, there was a sound from heaven like the roaring of a mighty windstorm, and it filled the house where they were sitting. Then, what looked like flames or tongues of fire appeared and settled on each of them. And everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other languages, as the Holy Spirit gave them this ability.

Introduction

When I was a little boy around 7 to 10 years old, I was invited to go to church with my older step-brother. He, being 11 years older than me took me and our little brother to church across town one Sunday. He dropped us off with a teacher where we would learn the stories of the Bible. I found that to be very interesting. We would go every so often and on one occasion my brother thought it the right time to invite me into the main church where all the adults gathered. I felt a little out of place, to be honest. There was a lot of hugging and talking before the service got started. I remember it being an old wooden church with wooden pews and creeky wooden floors. The singing started and the preacher started preaching and all of a sudden it was like a light switch got flipped. People were all over the place dancing around, stepping up on pews, shouting and speaking some kinds of sounds that sounded a lot like gibberish to me at the time. I looked with confusion and amazement all at the same time. I looked up to my brother to find that he turned into someone who had laid every care to the wind and danced and twirled like no one was looking.. I have often jokingly stated that they were hanging from the chandeliers. Of course they were’nt but the whole thing spooked me because I was unaware of such behavior.

I have been around some very strange people in my short time, and some of them can make you shrug your shoulders. Some people act so weird and give “Pentecostal” a bad name. Furthermore , because of this many doubt the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and never move into the promise that God wants for them.

But once you experience Pentecost for yourself, you see another picture. Now, I cannot imagine my life without the supernatural power of God in it.

Our Church of God Declaration of Faith states:

We believe: In the baptism with the Holy Ghost subsequent to a clean heart.

we also believe: In speaking with other tongues as the Spirit gives utterance and that it is the initial evidence of the baptism in the Holy Ghost.

Let’s look at Pentecost today and shed some light on it.

The Origins of Pentecost

Pentecost is also known as the Feast of Weeks or Feast of Harvest. Called Shavuot in Hebrew.

It was one of three feasts/festivals where all Jewish men would travel to Jerusalem.

On the Jewish calendar there were 3 very significant days as outlined in

Exodus 23:14–17 ““Each year you must celebrate three festivals in my honor. First, celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread. For seven days the bread you eat must be made without yeast, just as I commanded you. Celebrate this festival annually at the appointed time in early spring, in the month of Abib, for that is the anniversary of your departure from Egypt. No one may appear before me without an offering. “Second, celebrate the Festival of Harvest, when you bring me the first crops of your harvest. “Finally, celebrate the Festival of the Final Harvest at the end of the harvest season, when you have harvested all the crops from your fields. At these three times each year, every man in Israel must appear before the Sovereign, the Lord.”

So you can see those three festivals are:

Passover (Pesach)

Pentecost (Shavuot)

Festival of Shelters or Tabernacles (Sukkot)

This feast of weeks, specifically was a harvest feast to be celebrated 50 days after the Passover.

This is where we get the name “Pentecost”

It is derived from 2 Greek words - “Penti” meaning 5 and “Costi” meaning to the 10th power

So we get the word “Pentocost” simply meaning 50 days

This Festival had a two-fold purpose:

It was a great celebration for God’s people. They would praise God for the great bounty they recieved when they planted there fields.

To me it is interesting that as Christians today, we pray Grace before each meal. We say something like, “Lord bless this meal to my body and my body to your service.” While that is fine - nothing wrong with it, the typical Jewish prayer would be a little different.

They would pray, “Blessed are you Lord, our God, King of the universe, who brings forth the bread from the earth.”

The blessing would be to God not to the food. (Just an interesting observation)

This festival was also a celebration of the giving of the Law to Moses and the people on Mt. Sinai (See Exodus 34)

Exodus 19 outlines a time 2 months after the Israelites left Egypt and God called Moses to the top of Mount Sinai.

He gave him pretty specific instructions on what to do.

He established a covenant between Himself and the people

God told them if they would follow His commands, then He would be there God and they would be His people

They all agreed!

God said He would come in a thick cloud (Exodus 19:9) so the people could hear when He spoke to Moses

Moses was to prepare the people for God’s arrival

consecrate them by washing their clothing for two days

Mark off a boundary and don’t go up the mountain or touch any of its boundries

The people would be allowed to go up the mountain when they heard the blast of the ram’s horn

Here is where things get really exciting

Exodus 19:16–18 “On the morning of the third day, thunder roared and lightning flashed, and a dense cloud came down on the mountain. There was a long, loud blast from a ram’s horn, and all the people trembled. Moses led them out from the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. All of Mount Sinai was covered with smoke because the Lord had descended on it in the form of fire. The smoke billowed into the sky like smoke from a brick kiln, and the whole mountain shook violently.”

What an awesome sight it must have been!

So on the day that God gave the Law - There was a sound from heaven

Exodus 20 through 31 outline this blessed meeting between God and Moses and all of the instructions for how to live and worship God were given.

But we know that while Moses was up on the mountain the people were waiting. And they got tired of waiting.

So they gathered around Aaron (Moses brother) asked for him to make them gods who can lead them.

We pick up the story at Exodus 32:7 “The Lord told Moses, “Quick! Go down the mountain! Your people whom you brought from the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves.”

God saw what was going on and blazed with anger and ended up killing 3,000 people that day

Let’s sum up what happened: There was a sound from heaven, the Law was written on stone tablets and 3000 people died.

The Day of Pentecost

Acts 2:1–4 “On the day of Pentecost all the believers were meeting together in one place. Suddenly, there was a sound from heaven like the roaring of a mighty windstorm, and it filled the house where they were sitting. Then, what looked like flames or tongues of fire appeared and settled on each of them. And everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other languages, as the Holy Spirit gave them this ability.”

The Day of Pentecost is a Day of Restoration and Fulfillment

On the Day of Pentecost, God Reversed the Giving of the Law

Now that the people were gathered in one place to celebrate the anniversary of the giving of the Law, there were many festivities taking place.

But there were also a group of people who had devoted themselves to prayer and waited for the Promise of the Holy Spirit.

As the group of disciples waited in the upper room there came a sound from heaven and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit was the one that Jesus promised would come after he departed and the Spirit would lead them into all truth.

Before there was the Law, which had no power to fix what was wrong, only to expose it.

Now the Spirit had come giving them the power to fulfill the Law.

Before the Law was written on tablets, now the Law is written on the hearts of the belivers.

The Law brought death and now the Spirit brings life.

That is cause for great celebration!!!

On the Day of Pentecost, God Restored a Pure Language

Zephaniah 3:9 (NLT)

“Then I will purify the speech of all people,

so that everyone can worship the Lord together.

You may recall that at one time all the people of the world spoke the same language.

Genesis chapter 11 tells the story of the Tower of Babel

All the people gathered in the land of Babylonia and built a great city for themselves.

They built a tower that reached into the sky. Their goal was to be famous and to keep from being scatterd all over the world.

But the Lord came down and took a look at what was going on and look what He said:

Genesis 11:6–7 ““Look!” he said. “The people are united, and they all speak the same language. After this, nothing they set out to do will be impossible for them! Come, let’s go down and confuse the people with different languages. Then they won’t be able to understand each other.””

It may seem very strange that the Lord would want to confuse the people and that may be hard for some people to swallow, but we must understand that the people had a wrong motive. They were not interested in worshiping God, they were interested in making themselves god.

The Lord scattered them and from there on, people spoke many different languages.

There a currently a little over 7,000 known languages in the world. That represents a lot of different people all over the world.

Now on the day of Pentecost, people had gathered from all over the known world to celebrate the mandatory festival of weeks.

As the disciples gathered in the upper room they prayed and fasted. They did what Jesus told them to do. As they did there came a sound from heaven. Look what happened next...

Acts 2:5–12 “At that time there were devout Jews from every nation living in Jerusalem. When they heard the loud noise, everyone came running, and they were bewildered to hear their own languages being spoken by the believers. They were completely amazed. “How can this be?” they exclaimed. “These people are all from Galilee, and yet we hear them speaking in our own native languages! Here we are—Parthians, Medes, Elamites, people from Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, the province of Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, and the areas of Libya around Cyrene, visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism), Cretans, and Arabs. And we all hear these people speaking in our own languages about the wonderful things God has done!” They stood there amazed and perplexed. “What can this mean?” they asked each other.”

Not only was Pentecost the the reversal of the giving of the Law but it was also the reversal of the Tower of Babel.

At the Tower of Babel they were all together and spoke one language but they were wicked and unredeemed.

Now the Jesus had been crucified, buried and rose from the grave, Man could be redeemed from the curse of sin. And God could go about restoring a pure language.

A pure language is one without curse words, one without dirty and filty talk. It is one that can reach heaven.

Now that we know the origins of Pentecost and what happenend on the day of Penteost, some might wander if it is available today?

Experiencing Pentecost

I have been around a lot of Christians who love Jesus but believe, somehow, that Pentecost was a one-time event.

Many would say that there is no place for Pentecost in the 21st century church.

They say it happened 2,000 years ago and it was for the original apostles and not today.

I would hate to think about my life without the supernatural gift of the Holy Spirit.

I love how Pastor Robert Morris explains this:

He says instead of saying it happened 2,000 years ago, it might be better to say it was fulfilled 2,000 years ago.

Passover was also fulfilled when Jesus died on the cross. He was the Passover Lamb. Now we don’t have to sacrifice a lamb, The Lamb from heaven came .

But just becuase we were not alive when Jesus died on the cross does not mean that we cannot experience the fulfillment of Passover. To experience that, what you do is recieve Jesus into your life.

Just like that experience is still available, thank God, Pentecost is still available to you today! To experience that, you need to RECIEVE the Holy Spirit.

When the Holy Spirit was poured out on the disciples, Peter and the others preached and the church was born.

Peter preached and those who heard had their hearts pierced. They asked a simple question, one that we all need to ask, “What should we do?”

Peter tells them to do 3 things, (3 separate things)

Repent of your sins and turn to God

Be Baptized - meaning immersed into Jesus

Recieve the gift of the Holy Spirit

Look at what He says next:

Acts 2:39 “This promise is to you, to your children, and to those far away—all who have been called by the Lord our God.””

So, you see this promise, the promise of the Holy Spirit is not just for Peter, but its for you and me too!

Not only that, this was not the only time the Holy Spirit was poured out.

The Samaritans

We see a wonderful story of the growth of the church in Acts chapter 8.

Philip went to Samaria and preached the gospel of Jesus Christ, explaining that Jesus was born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, died on a cross for the punishment of sin and rose from the grave and ascended to heaven.

The people believed Philip’s message and many were baptized (in water).

we catch up to the story in verse 14

Acts 8:14–17 “When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that the people of Samaria had accepted God’s message, they sent Peter and John there. As soon as they arrived, they prayed for these new believers to receive the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit had not yet come upon any of them, for they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then Peter and John laid their hands upon these believers, and they received the Holy Spirit.”

Take notice that this is a separte experience from that of intial conversion.

The Ephesians

The case of the Ephesians is where many people in the church find themselves today.

We see in Acts chapter 19 that the apostle Paul is on his third missionary journey and he travels to Ephesus.

He finds several believers and we pick up the story in verse 2

Acts 19:2 ““Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” he asked them. “No,” they replied, “we haven’t even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.””

Paul asks them what baptism did they recieve and they told him the baptism of John.

Paul explains that the baptism of John called for the repentance of sin, but John told them about Jesus, who would come later.

When they heard that, they were baptized or immersed into Jesus. They were Jews who just became Christians.

Look what happens next...

Acts 19:6 “Then when Paul laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in other tongues and prophesied.”

I want to point out that this is 24 years after the Day of Pentecost.

We see many more outpourings over the many years since then. Take for instance a revival at Cane Ridge in Kentucky in 1801, when the wind of God came in and people were filled with the Holy Spirit.

This was not a Pentecostal meeting, it was a Presbyterian run meeting where the minister invited other churches to come. It is reported that nearly 20,000 people came to those meetings seeking God and the glorious presence of God came and filled them with the presence of heaven.

How about in 1896 in the Unicoi mountains at the Shearer School House where people gathered to seek God and the wind that blew on Pentecost blew on them and the Church of God was formed.

The wind that blew on the day of Pentecost and in 1896 is still blowing today,

My question to you today is the same one that Paul asked that church in Ephesus all those years ago, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?”

Jesus told us that the Father wants to give us this gift, we are to have faith and believe Him.

The church needs to receive the Holy Spirit. If that is you today, make your way down here and we are going to pray.

Pray this today:

Jesus, I’m trusting You today. I ask you to baptize me with your Holy Spirit.

Holy Spirit, forgive me of the wrong things that I have thought about You. I receive You today by faith believing.