Acts #2 — Shavuot (Pentecost)
Acts 2:1-13
(Cross-posted in the 70 weeks with Jesus section.)

We have reached week 70 in our study. We began in January, looking at John the Baptist as the forerunner to Jesus. The 70-week study of Jesus’ ministry started on February 16th, with Jesus’ baptism. We have followed Jesus week by week as he traveled about, teaching, healing, and discipling his small group. 

As I was looking back this week, I asked many people this question: “What is the climax of Jesus’ ministry?”  Most said the climax was the crucifixion or the resurrection, which are good answers.  But to decide on the climax of the story, let’s review the plot, the story of the Bible, which is all about Jesus.

God created a world and people and said it was good.  And God and his people lived together in the same space we call the Garden of Eden.  But sin came in Genesis 3 and broke the fellowship between God and his people.  Sin and death entered the world.  And the rest of the Bible is the story of how God is working to restore his relationship with his people, to reunite heaven and earth.   

In Exodus, God tells Moses to build a tabernacle, “So I can dwell with them.” God establishes his presence in this small people group, leading them with a pillar of fire and cloud.  Later, Temples were built as places where God’s and man’s space could overlap. But even with constant sacrifice, sin is not completely dealt with. People continue to be rebellious.  

So Jesus comes, Emmanuel, God with us.  And for a short time, God is present with us in the person of Jesus.  Through Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, sin and death are defeated so that we have the possibility of eternal life with God.  And then in his ascension to the Father and his enthronement at the Father’s right hand, He serves as our High Priest and from there sends us the blessing of the Father, which is God’s presence with all of us.  In Jesus, God is fulfilling his goal of communion with us by sending the Holy Spirit to live in us.  And we have become temples, filled with God’s presence, where God’s space and man’s space overlap.   Is this the climax?

God is not finished, because the day is coming when Jesus will return to complete his work.  He is coming again to bring a complete end to sin and death and to restore God’s kingdom over all, and heaven and earth will be one again.  That is the day that the prayer you constantly pray will be answered.   “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  This is the climax of Jesus’ ministry – when he returns and God has completed his redemption of the world.

But today we are talking about the arrival of the Holy Spirit.  Just before he ascended, Jesus told the disciples the Holy Spirit was coming in a few days.  They were to wait in Jerusalem until then.  And what did they do while they were waiting?

Luke 24:50-53   While he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple blessing God.”

First, they worshipped right there.  Then they returned to Jerusalem.   And how did they spend their time there?  They were continually blessing God.  And where were they meeting to bless God?  The Jewish Temple.   What does it mean to bless God?   Blessing is from the root word to ‘bend the knee.’   We praise and thank God for who he is and what he has done.  And Jesus, as a young boy, was taught the traditional Jewish blessings.  It seemed that there was a blessing for everything. 100 blessings a day.

When we wake up: “Blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has given me today the breath of life.” When we have food: “Blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.” And when we go to bed:  “Blessed is He who brings sleep to my eyes and slumber to my eyelids.”

Blessing God — this is how we worship God every day, everywhere.

Worshipping While Waiting.  Do you like to wait?  I have to confess that I am not good at waiting. I can, at times, be annoyingly impatient, especially when driving. The light turns green, and suddenly, the three seconds it takes the car in front of me to go seem an eternity.  Am I the only one like this?  The disciples took advantage of this time of waiting to bless God.

So, this past week, I experimented with finding reasons to thank or bless God anytime I found myself waiting, worshiping in waiting. At 5:45 a.m. on Tuesday morning, driving from Georgia to Alabama, at the four red lights in a row (with no other cars present), I am blessing God.  “Blessed are you, our Lord, King of the universe, who has made such a beautiful day.  Blessed are you, Yehovah, who has created coffee so I can be fully awake.”

Later that trip, I got behind a large truck doing 15 mph up the mountain in Crossville. (This happens almost every time.) But this time, instead of complaining to myself about the delay, I am blessing God.  “Blessed are you, our Lord, king of the Universe, who has given me a chance to see this amazing view off the mountain.”  Let me tell you, it was a much better drive.

The disciples didn’t know exactly when the Spirit would come.  Jesus told them the Father’s timing was not for them to know.  

Why is God waiting 10 days?  What is He waiting for?  When you study the scriptures, you find God is very intentional with his timing.  The Old Testament often speaks of the “fullness of time.”  Jesus says over and over in his Gospels, “My hour has not yet come,” until he prays in Gethsemane, and then says, “The hour has come.”  God makes sure that Jesus is crucified as the Passover lambs are being slain, and he is resurrected on the day of the Feast of FirstFruits.  So it should not come as a surprise that God is setting up the coming of the blessing of the Holy Spirit at a special time.

Pentecost is from the Greek pentekostos, meaning “50″, because it is 50 days from Passover.  By the time of Jesus, the Jews had been celebrating that day for over a thousand years.  In the Hebrew Scriptures, it is called Shavuot, which translates into ‘sevens’ or ‘weeks.’   Leviticus 23 commanded them to count seven ‘sevens’ or seven weeks and then one day.  Then there was a special offering with grain and animals, as well as a special reading and convocation.  (Leviticus 23:15-21).   This was one of the three feasts that the scripture required all males to attend and make an offering.  (Deuteronomy 16:16).  So, as in Passover, the city is packed with over a hundred thousand Jews from all over the known world who have made their way to Jerusalem for this special day, bringing offerings of thanksgiving for God’s blessings.  

Isn’t it interesting that God tells them to count up 50 days?   The scriptures specify the day that the Passover falls as the 14th day of the 1st month.  But the Bible never says that Shavuot is on the 6th day of the third month.  It simply says to count the days.  For 50 days, they have a special grain offering in the Temple and would make a ceremony of counting the days.  It is all about anticipation.  Something great is coming.  

Shavuot is a harvest celebration.  As Passover and Firstfruits celebrate the barley harvest, Shavuot, 50 days later, celebrates the wheat harvest. But they are both more than harvest celebrations.  Passover celebrates the night they were spared the death of the firstborn, and they escaped bondage in Egypt.   Shavuot also commemorates the giving of the law on Mt Sinai, which Exodus tells us happened 50 days after the first Passover.

We talked about how seven is the number of completeness throughout the Bible.  If seven is completeness, the eighth in the series is the beginning of something new.  In Genesis, God set up the week of seven days; the eighth day is the start of a new week.  We have seen many examples of sevens in the Gospel of John.  Jesus has seven table meals in John’s Gospel with people; the eighth is after the resurrection.  There are seven confessions people make about Jesus, and then the eighth one, after the resurrection, is the one that is new and different.  For the first time, He is recognized as God.  The eighth of something is new.  So we count 7 weeks, seven sevens — complete completeness, then the next day is something radically new —Pentecost.  God is doing a new thing.   To the Jews in Jesus’ day, the new thing was the giving of the law.

And that encounter with God at Mount Sinai was dramatic and powerful.  The mountain is filled with fire and smoke and noise, with the whole mountain shaking violently.  The people were filled with fear and refused to go up the mountain as God had invited them, so they sent Moses for them.   We have discussed this powerful manifestation of God seen here, and how it is repeated at the dedication of the tabernacle with the cloud and fire consuming the sacrifice and God’s glory filling the space. 

This same overwhelming presence of God was seen again at the dedication of Solomon’s temple.  Again, fire came down from heaven, consuming the sacrifice, and again, God’s glory filled the Temple. But the people continued to rebel, and you remember that God punished his people for their sin by allowing the foreign nation of Babylon to conquer them.  

Ezekiel, the prophet, saw in a vision the presence of God leaving Solomon’s Temple.  Then the temple and the city of Jerusalem were destroyed, and all the people taken captive.  Seventy years later, when they returned to the land of Israel, they rebuilt the temple and had this grand dedication service.  But unlike the dedication of the tabernacle, unlike the dedication of Solomon’s temple, this time, God did not show up.  There was no fire, no wind, no cloud, and no sound.  God did not return because the sins that led to their exile still remained.  They had not repented.

But God revealed to Ezekiel that though God had abandoned this Temple, He had not abandoned His people.  One day, he would return to His temple.   And all the prophets in the Old Testament looked forward to this time when God would return.  As the final prophet in the Old Testament, Malachi said:

Malachi 3:1    Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly return to his temple;

And they waited, and they waited… 400 years they waited.   Until that messenger that Malachi spoke of came… John the Baptist – the one crying in the wilderness to prepare the way of the Lord.  And then, about 16 months later, God finally returns to the temple.

God comes to the temple in the form of Jesus.  He comes riding on a donkey as King David and Solomon did.  And he enters the temple on that Palm Sunday.  But he comes not to be praised, but to judge.  That is when he overturns the tables of the crooked money changers and drives out the corrupt animal salesmen.  He comes with harsh words of judgment for the religious leaders of the day.  And they kill him.  And he is resurrected, but he does not return to the temple again.  He is coming back to the temple just as Ezekiel and the other Old Testament prophets foresaw, but not yet.  Just look at the picture God is painting in history:

For 400 years, the children of Israel were held in slavery in Egypt.  400 years of waiting for redemption.  And Passover comes, and they are delivered from slavery, passing through the sea and traveling 50 days to Mount Sinai, where God’s presence shows up in mighty form.  Then you skip forward in history, and after the last prophet spoke in the Old Testament, for 400 years, they waited for God to return to His Temple. For 400 years, they waited for redemption. And Passover comes again, and through the death of Jesus on the cross, deliverance comes from slavery to sin. And then 50 days later, God’s presence comes in a mighty way to his temple. It is Pentecost. Could God make this any clearer?  He is about to intervene in history again, like he did at Sinai.

Let’s see what happened when God’s presence came on that first day of Shavuot, when God came on Sinai. But first, we have to realize that things of God are hard for the writers of the Bible to describe.  They are trying to represent in words something we don’t have the words to explain or the context to understand.   When Ezekiel sees God leaving the temple, he tries to give us a picture of what he is seeing, God’s throne chariot, but it is indescribable.  So he talks about wheels inside wheels that move in any direction, made of jewels, and multi-faced animals, and well, it is nothing I can picture.  

God is so much greater, so different that we cannot adequately describe his appearance.  So descriptions of God’s appearance or the descriptions of Heaven (God’s space) in Revelation are … well… just bizarre.  The Bible writers do the best they can, but it is like trying to explain a rocket ship to a caveman, or to explain colors to someone who has been blind from birth.  With that in mind, let’s look at how God’s presence at Sinai is described.  

Exodus 20:18   Now, when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled.

Our translators are trying to translate what it says in Hebrew, but they are having problems. Did they ” see” the thunder?  In Hebrew, it actually says,  “When all people saw the voice.” That Hebrew word appears over 500 times in the Bible and is almost always translated as voice, except in Exodus. They use “thunder” to try to describe God’s voice.

Look what Job says about God’s voice:

Job 37:2-4   Listen! Listen to the roar of his voice, to the rumbling that comes from his mouth.
He unleashes his lightning beneath the whole heaven and sends it to the ends of the earth.
After that comes the sound of his roar; He thunders with his majestic voice.
When his voice resounds, He holds nothing back.

So the people “saw the voice of God” and  then “flashes of lightning.”  “Flashes of lightning” is one Hebrew word, “lappidim,” which is always translated as “torches” except in this verse.    This is not lightning.  There is another Hebrew word for lighting (barak) used 21 times in the Bible.  These are pieces of fire that are moving or, as the modern Tyndale commentary says, “fireballs”, like in Abraham’s vision of God.¹  Or as Jerry Lee Lewis would say, “Great balls of fire.”²

Many times in the Bible, the voice of God is visualized as flames of fire.  Here is one example in the Psalms

Psalm 29:7   The voice of the LORD flashes forth flames of fire.
  The voice of the LORD shakes the wilderness.

So when God’s mighty presence comes at Mount Sinai, it is hard to describe, but the people see the voice of God like fireballs, and it thunders and roars. Over 1000 years later, on the same day of the year, at the celebration of that Sinai moment, God’s presence comes again on the Temple Mount.  And how does Luke describe it?

Acts 2:1-3 “When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them.”

Notice he doesn’t feel the wind but hears the sound of a “mighty rushing wind”.  In Greek, a “violent” wind.  Have you ever been close to a tornado?  One day, my family huddled in our hall when one passed by.  The sound has been described as a freight train, a thundering, rumbling, howling sound.  It is a frightening sound.

A flame comes and divides itself into tongues of fire.  Tongue in Greek can mean the actual muscle in your mouth or, more commonly, ‘tongue’ is a language.  (We still use the term, “native tongue.”). A few verses later, when it says the disciples speak in “other tongues,” it is, of course, not saying they had different muscles in their mouth, but they spoke different languages.³  As in Sinai, fire divides into pieces, ‘tongues’ or ‘balls’ of fire.  God’s presence is being manifested in much the same way as it was at Sinai. ⁴ Again, Luke is trying to describe God’s presence, and like the writer of Exodus, he does the best he can.

What we can see is that the day the Old Testament prophets had looked forward to has arrived. God’s presence has finally returned to the Temple after over 400 years of waiting. But where do the flames come from to rest? Not on the Temple building, as when God came to the Tabernacle and Solomon’s temple, but on the disciples’ heads.  The temple that God returned to was not the physical building there, not Herod’s Temple.  They waited over 400 years for God to return to His Temple, and he has.  But the temple is us. 

1 Corinthians 3:16   Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? 

Jeremiah had seen this coming. 

Jeremiah 31:33   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.

Who is there in the temple on that Pentecost?   Jews from all over the world gathered for the required feast—the whole house of Israel.  At the first Shavuot, God gave them the law on stone tablets.  But Jeremiah saw the day coming, a new Shavuot with a new covenant: “I will put my law within them.”  The word they translate as “law” is the Hebrew word ‘Torah.’  And Torah can mean law, or the first five books of the Bible, but it literally means “God’s instructions for living.”   If we listen to and follow the Holy Spirit, God’s Spirit within us will teach us how to live.

Ezekiel 36:26-27 “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.”

Again, the Holy Spirit within us will “cause us to follow God’s instructions”.   The Spirit will show us how to live and follow God’s rules.  And just after this passage is the vision God gave Ezekiel of the spirit coming.  There was a valley full of dried-up bones.  And God asked Ezekiel, “Can these bones come back to life?”  It sure didn’t look like it.  They were dead and dried up and lying in the sand.  But God said, “I will cause breath to enter you and you shall live.”   And the breath came into them, and they stood and came to life.   

And God tells Ezekiel the meaning of the vision.  The bones are the house of Israel, which is dried up without hope.  But God is going to breathe life into them.  Remember that the Hebrew word for breath is Ruach, the same word for wind or spirit.  In Genesis 1, the Spirit is hovering over the face of the waters.   Then God takes the dust and breathes life into the dust.  God places his breath, his spirit, in us.   Breath is life. 

When a baby is born, it appears lifeless at first, which can be scary. Then, it is stimulated and takes its first breath, and with that first breath come signs of life: movement and crying.  If you have ever witnessed a death, there is that last breath, a final exhale of breath from their lungs.  You can see how long ago people understood breath as life. Breath enters, and there is life; breath leaves, and there is death.  That is why they used the same word for breath, wind, and spirit (in Hebrew ‘ruach’ and in Greek ‘pneuma’). God tells us it is His Spirit, His Ruach, that gives us life.

People look at the Church in the world and see decreasing attendance in worship and decreasing membership, and they say the Church is dying.  I don’t believe that.  Because life is not measured in numbers, numerical growth does not determine life.  It is the spirit that gives life.  If we can learn to accept the presence of the Holy Spirit of God in our lives, then we live.  But so many don’t even consider the presence of God’s spirit in them.

Paul tells his apprentice Timothy:

2 Timothy 1:6   Fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands,”

We need to be fanning the flame in ourselves.  When you invite God into your life, He comes as the Holy Spirit, that fireball from God.  We need to feed that fire by listening to the Spirit, agreeing with the Spirit, and following the Spirit.

Paul repeatedly tells us not to ignore God’s Spirit in our lives.

1 Thessalonians 5:19  Do not quench the Spirit.”
Ephesians 4:30   Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God.

The Holy Spirit is within us to instruct us, lead us, and make our character more like Jesus so that we will look like him.  The spirit within us causes us to produce this fruit.

Galatians 5:22-23 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control;”

This is what a disciple of Jesus looks like.  This is the effect of God’s Holy Spirit in a person.  

Maybe, like me, you look at this list of nine attributes and realize you aren’t listening to the Spirit as much as you should.  Today is a good day to begin being a better listener and follower.

Let me add one more connection between that first Pentecost, that first Shavuot at Mount Sinai, and the Pentecost in Acts 2.  Do you remember when Moses was up on the mountain receiving the Ten Commandments from God? What was going on with the people of Israel?   They have given up on Moses and made a golden calf to worship.   And God sent a plague on the people, and those who were guilty were affected and were then slain by the Levites.  And 3000 died that day (Exodus 32:28).

After the Holy Spirit comes on Pentecost, Peter preaches a sermon. Many decide to follow Jesus and are baptized. How many?

Acts 2:41 “So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.”

God is redeeming here what was lost before.  God is still in the business of redeeming that which was lost.  And those 3000 Jews from all over the known world who just got baptized will head back to their home countries the next day.   Do you see what God just did there?  3000 missionaries spreading the Gospel to the world, all sent in one day.

And there is a world beyond our doors that is broken and lost.  And God, through His Holy Spirit in us, desires that no one perish, but all come to repentance.  Remember Jesus telling his disciples (John 14.12) that they would do greater works than he did because he was going to the Father? Jesus goes to the Father so he can send us the blessing of the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit of Christ lives in us.  We need to be doing great things.

1. Cole, R. Alan.  Tyndale Complete Commentary, Exodus.  
2. The phrase “Great Balls of Fire!” became popular in the southern United States in the mid-1800s, according to “Phrase Finder” (internet website) based on the references in Exodus, as the presence of God indicated by fire.  The phrase became more popular in the South after being quoted multiple times by Scarlett O’Hara in “Gone with the Wind” (1939).  But the best-known use of the phrase was in the song popularized by Jerry Lee Lewis in 1957, “Great Balls of Fire.” Lyrics and music by Otis Blackwell and Earl Burroughs.
3. Notice that what happens at Pentecost, with all of the people able to understand each other as if they all had the same language, is the reversal of what happened at the Tower of Babel in Genesis.  Those people were arrogantly trying to build their own way to heaven.  At Pentecost, God is making a way for heaven to come to people.
4. Where did this happen?  Tradition from the 5th century says it was at the Upper Room, where they also had the Last Supper.  But a look at the Scripture makes that less likely.   It is happening on the day of the Feastival of Shavuot, a one-day festival.   The scripture tells us they were in the Temple “continually.”  Peter mentions the time in his sermon after the Spirit comes as 9:00 am.  The temple services typically began with the first Tamid offering at 9 am.  And this service is one of the three times that the Scriptures say is required attendance. They would not have missed the service that is the highlight of the one-day celebration.  And the Scriptures mention that 3000 responded to Peter’s sermon and were baptized.  This had to happen in or near the temple grounds to have a place large enough for a crowd this large to hear them speak, and then to have a place to baptize that many.  There were over 50 mikveh near the Temple Mount, for people to immerse themselves in before entry into the Temple.