PENTECOST
Read from Acts 2:1-4
After the reconstitution of the Twelve, Luke narrates the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. This event not only fulfills the promises made by Jesus (Luke 24:49; Acts 1:4–5, 8) and John the Baptist (Luke 3:16), but it also indicates that God p 41 has begun to fulfill the prophetic promises he made to Israel to redeem and restore his people by sending a Spirit from on high (e.g., Isa 32:15; 44:3; Ezek 36:27–28; 37:14). The actual narration of this event, for all of its importance, is remarkably brief, comprising only four verses in our Bible. But Luke provides some significant, albeit subtle, clues as to the meaning and significance of the event in 2:1–4. First, the temporal setting for the giving of the Spirit at the festival of Pentecost (2:1) is reminiscent of Jewish traditions that associated the festival with God’s giving of the Law at Sinai (e.g., Jubilees 1:1; 6:17–19; 22:1–16; 1QS I, 8–II, 25; cf. Deut 16:9–12).12 In Acts the outpouring of the Spirit is accompanied by violent sounds from heaven, a rushing wind, and tongues like fire upon the people who are assembled together in the upper room (2:2–3). And this is highly reminiscent of Moses and Israel at Sinai where thunder, lighting, smoke, and a loud sound like a trumpet accompanies God’s giving of the law to Moses and the people who are assembled to meet God (Exod 19:16–18).13 As God constituted his people through this theophany and giving of Torah at Sinai, so now God marks out his people through this new theophany that is marked by the outpouring of the Spirit. Schnabel states it well when he says this suggests that “the Holy Spirit of God … is in some way the Spirit of the new covenant, or, more precisely, the Spirit of the life in the renewed covenant and thus in restored Israel.”14 We can see now even more clearly why it was necessary to have twelve apostolic witnesses as the symbolic representation of the leaders of the restored Israel.