Pentecost

Winter

Just three days ago saw the calendar flip from May to June, which of course means that officially winter has started. This year, not only was it the official change of seasons, but within a day or two, it corresponded with a pretty big change in temperature.

We all put on heavier jackets. I dare say some of you probably got your gloves out, and put your beanies on.

Suddenly it seems hard to remember that it was only a matter of a few months ago that we were all complaining at how hot it was - and I’m led to believe that it was the hottest Australian summer on record!

With a new season come new activities. The swimmers go to the bottom of the drawer, instead we do things that are going to warm us up.

In the kitchen, those yummy summer fruits are gone, and instead we enjoy the hot soups.

These changes that we observe all happen for very obvious reasons. It’s the same reason that you just don’t ever forget when winter hits. That’s because, if you do momentarily forget, the moment you step outside you realise that it is really cold and you’re going to need a thicker jumper.

A new Christian season

This morning, we’re going to look at a change in the Christian season - something we don’t tend to think too much about, but there can be a great richness that can be found.

With most of us here growing up with a Baptist background, we mostly come from the perspective that there are really only two events on the Christians calendar, and that is Easter and Christmas.

While there are good reasons that these two feature so prominently, there are other dates on that calendar which can help us draw out more of the great richness of how God has revealed himself to humanity.

This morning as Fiona has already pointed out, we come to Pentecost, which for those of you who are familiar with it, your mind will go straight to the passage I read earlier where the Holy Spirit comes down in power.

This morning I do want to explore this passage, however, I actually want to go back even further to delve into the origins of Pentecost.

As I do, my aim is to show this great depth we get in Scripture as the Old Testament sets up the wonderful platform in which God comes in power into our world.

From this, I hope that we can learn a few lessons regarding how we interact with God’s kingdom in our current season.

Back to Egypt

So to start, we need to go back all the way to Egypt where a group of about 70 people, all descendants of Jacob, found themselves in Egypt, where over the space of about 430 years become a large nation that was now in bondage.

These were the formative years for the young nation of Israel - a nation chosen by God from whom salvation would come.

But to move from these formative years, into a time in which this nation could flourish, it would be required that they break the yoke of slavery - and this was done in spectacular fashion with 10 great plagues which forced the hand of pharaoh and the people were gone.

The last of these plagues was the angel of death that flew over and killed the first born male of every family that didn’t have a mark on their door.

From this comes what came to be known as the Passover, and a detailed feast was instituted by God to mark this occurrence so that God’s people would always remember God’s mighty power.

From this point, the new nation leave Egypt and enter a new season of their life where they are to rely on God.

Our Tuesday night bible study have just been going through this section, and the Israelites grumble a lot, however what they are learning is that they are going to need to rely on God for their food, and the water and guidance. Without God they would just die.

Agricultural setting

Now, I want you to keep that background set aside in your mind, because I now want to describe another aspect of this culture, and one that at first sight seems quite unrelated.

During this time period, and indeed for most of history prior to the industrial revolution, agriculture was a huge part of society.

During the 40 years the Israelites wandered in the dessert, their agriculture would have been mainly livestock that could be moved around, but crops would feature significantly as they moved into the promised land.

With crops comes seasonal variation where a yearly cycle is naturally formed.

Two of the prominent crops were barley and wheat.

Now barley is naturally due for harvest around the months that we call April and May. The wheat harvest then starts somewhere around the end of May, or early June. And then the harvest process would typically end around October.

OT festivals

Now you may wonder why in the world have I gone down this tangent. But you see, because of the prominence that agriculture was going to play, it was natural that the big markers in their year would revolve around this, after all the dates of harvest were a result of what God was doing, that is, God made the seasons, God made the plants, and so the whole cycle is dependent on him.

And so in the Old Testament there are three main festivals that were held throughout the year.

The first one marked the start of the cycle, and also happened to be the same date in which Israel left Egypt, in other words, Passover.

The second festival marked the end of the barley harvest and the start of the wheat harvest.

Now the timing of this naturally fell 50 days after Passover.

This is of course one more than 49 days which is a week of weeks, that is, seven lots of seven. And so being a week of weeks, it came to be known as the Festival of Weeks.

Later in New Testament times when the Greek language grew in usage, it came to be referred to as Pentecost, being a reference to the 50 days.

The third festival then came at the end of the harvest season and was known as the Feast of Tabernacles.

Connecting feasts with God’s activity

And so, with these three festivals marking the start, the change over of crops and the end of the harvest season, we can then also begin to see some parallels with what God is doing with Israel.

You see, we can find a parallel with the start of the harvest and God bringing his people out of slavery and into a new start.

In both cases, God’s providence leads to a new fruitful time. He is doing something new that is life giving.

The next festival is actually a little harder to connect with the exodus. Now in Jewish tradition, the feast of weeks (that is, Pentecost), has been linked with the giving of the law on Mount Sinai, however this is quite a late development in Jewish tradition, and no such link is made in the bible.

However in , which describes this festival, it does make a link between remembering the exodus and the festival.

While we could spend more time carefully examining these links the main thing I want to highlight is that the annual reminder of the harvest, is the perfect opportunity to remember the great acts of God’s provision which ultimately served all of humanity.

On a much smaller scale, most of us here do something on a daily basis that helps us remember God’s goodness, and that is say grace before a meal. You see, we are using a regular activity to remind us of God’s overarching providence.

The important story

Now, before we move from considering the Old Testament, I just want to emphasize how important the story of the exodus was to the Jews, and should also be to us.

You see, the story of Israel coming out of Egypt is not just some cute little story that’s nice to tell to kids, rather it is God putting his stamp on a new nation that is central to the whole plan to reconcile humanity with God. By recalling this event, we are reminded of this great plan that God has now executed with precision.

The New Testament

And so with this context of the Old Testament festivals, we now come into the New Testament.

Not a plan ‘B’

And it’s worth pointing out at this point an error that I believe many Christians hold to - and that is the view that the Old Testament was like a plan ‘A’ that went wrong and so God figured he needed a better plan, and hence we get the New Testament.

I don’t believe this is the case at all, and the more I study the links between the Old and New Testaments, the more I see patterns that are established in the Old, and then are fullfilled in a far greater way in the New. This is because what God was doing in the Old Testament was always intended to point to the New. The great truths of the New Testament are given an amazing vitality by the fact that God set things up so beautifully.

The unfolding plan

And so with that in mind, we can now see how Jesus became the perfect Passover lamb. I could dwell on this point a bit more, but as Christians we make this connection a lot more readily, but take it from me that there are lots of parallels.

And so now as Christians the Passover takes on far greater significance. When we think about Passover, it is no longer just about this first great act of bringing the new nation of Israel out of bondage, rather it is about bringing all people out of bondage because of the work of Jesus Christ dying and rising again on the cross.

The death and resurrection of Jesus truly becomes the central point of Christianity, because with it, comes the very essence of the solution to our greatest problem - sin.

But this is where we need to remember that the story doesn’t end there. While this might be the most needed thing of all, a new season of harvest was coming - and here lies the beautiful intertwining of agricultural setting of the Old Testament festivals.

I think it is no accident that Jesus would often speak about spreading the gospel as a harvest.

A new season

You see, though Jesus has done the work which means all people can be reconciled to God, the news needed to be spread so that people could actually accept it. And to do this, a new season was needed.

And so, remembering that the festival of weeks was going from the harvest of barley to the harvest of wheat, this in many ways becomes almost the perfect time for a new season to start.

And so we come to the second chapter of the book of Acts which starts by telling us that it was the day of Pentecost.

This is significant for two reasons - the first is because of the link that I’ve just been describing, but also, because it is one of great Jewish festivals, there are a lot of visitors to the city.

Given the long lead in to getting to the chapter, I now just want to briefly go through the events of this day, before looking at what we can learn from this whole thing.

While they’ve all gathered together, commonly thought to be the same upper room in which Jesus gave the last supper, although this isn’t specified, a great big violent wind came and filled the room. Verse 3 then describes what seemed to be tongues of fire resting on each of them.

It is the fourth verse however when it is explained what is happening - this is the Holy Spirit that was promised by Jesus coming to be with them for this new harvest.

It is at this point that we are also told that they all start to speak in tongues. Now I don’t want to get too caught up in the issue of speaking in tongues now, but it would seem clear on this occasion, that what they are speaking is not some angelic tongue, rather it is languages spoken by other people.

I was saying before about the Old Testament themes that reappear in the New, and here we see an example of God reversing the curse of the Tower of Babel when everyone was given a different tongue to confuse them and stop them from reaching too far.

What was happening in the room quickly became evident elsewhere - some even assuming they were drunk, which was quickly denied.

In verse 14, Peter, the effective leader of the Apostles, stands up and addresses the crowd.

In his response he appeals to a few Old Testament passages, primarily a passage from that prophesied this day. He then went on to explain how Jesus fulfills the Old Testament prophecies and that they are now in these last days.

As we get to the end of this passage we see the great harvest that this becomes. In fact, verse 41 tells us that “Those who accepted his message were baptised and about three thousand were added to their number that day”

That is no small number - this was a most amazing day!

Link with Pentecost

The agricultural setting that I was previously describing, becomes very relevant now. You see, while Pentecost previously reminded them of God’s great harvest blessing, the harvest now takes on a new level of meaning - one which Jesus often alluded to.

While today, when we think of Pentecost, we primarily think of the events outlined in that I just described, the wonderful thing is that if we understand the Old Testament significance of it, we can get a new level of richness out of it.

Lessons to learn

So on this note, I want to now consider some of the lessons that we can learn, lessons that are enhanced by understanding this deeper level of Pentecost.

Celebrate God’s goodness

The first lesson is that we need to remember to celebrate God’s goodness.

If you look at the Old Testaments describing the festivals, you see that it says that they are to be a celebration. In fact in it actually says “be joyful at your festival - [and just in case you’re not sure who it’s saying should be joyful it spells it out for us…] you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, and the Levites, the foreigners, the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns” (in other words, everyone!)

Now while depending on your background, you might have different opinions on Christians that we today call Pentecostals, one thing that I think they generally do well is to be joyful.

And I think as we come to Pentecost, we need to remember that this is a great time of joy, because we now remember the amazing way in which God’s Spirit has been poured out on us.

Expect even more

The second lesson I want to draw from Pentecost is that we can expect even more.

I think that we can easily get ourselves into a mind set whereby we don’t set our sights too high because we don’t want to be disappointed. I think this usually happens because we all have great disappointments in our lives and we don’t like getting hurt like that.

Now it is true that sometimes even when we have expectations that seem very noble and godly, say for example that a certain family member will come to Christ, for whatever reason it just doesn’t happen - however I want to suggest that we should always expect God to work in amazing ways.

The problem lies in the specifics - that is, when we expect God to do something that we think is the right way of doing it. But the problem with this is that it assumes we know best.

You see, when we come to Pentecost and realise that the Holy Spirit has now been given to us, we should also assume that this will make a difference. This is not just some theoretical knowledge, this is a truth that has power.

We can also see this lesson from the example of the change in harvest season. Though one lot of harvest was coming to an end, there was still a bumper crop to look forward to. This is God’s goodness to us!

In Christ’s strength

The third and final lesson that I want to draw out this morning, is that Pentecost should remind us that it is not in our own strength we will achieve anything of significance, but only in the strength of Christ.

On that day of Pentecost, we see the Holy Spirit being poured out which if we go back to when Jesus promised the Spirit in , we see that He will guide and teach and generally just help us. In fact, the Spirit in these verse is a word which in Greek is “paraclete”, which has proved hard to translate, but means something along the lines of counselor, comforter, or advocate.

The ongoing harvest will not continue without the Spirit, because at the end of the day, this is God’s harvest, not our own.

Looking at the agricultural context of the festival, and thinking about how the crops actually come about to be at harvest, we should know that it has nothing to do with ourselves, rather everything to do with the Creator who made these plants to act in such a way.

Pentecost should be a reminder that we don’t do anything in our own strength.

Conclusion

As I conclude this morning, it is my hope that you can see the great richness in recognising Pentecost this morning. While, in our tradition it is not something we spend much time thinking about, there is much we can gain by dwelling on it.

It helps us to see the progression in God’s plan.

At Passover, Jesus stamped his victory on this world, but then came the season of Pentecost in which a whole new season of harvest has now begun.

This is the season that we are now in, a season in which Church History will show us has seen countless people come to know the risen Lord Jesus who now reigns on high, awaiting the day when he will come again, and we move to the next age.

So as we reflect on the lesson to be learnt, remember that this is a great time of celebration, that we should expect more, and that it is in the strength of Christ that we will achieve anything.

Let’s pray...