tongues

July 1 –  Asking the Right Question About Pentecost — Acts #4

David Chupp Acts , , , , ,

July 1 –  Asking the Right Question About Pentecost — Acts #4
Acts 2:1-13

Acts 2:1-13   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, filling the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.
Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. And they were amazed and astonished, saying, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.  And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others mocking said, “They are filled with new wine.”

We are continuing to discuss what happened at Pentecost. As I said last week, it is a turning point in history. As we journey through the Book of Acts, we will consider the implications of this watershed moment.  On that day, when God chose to send the blessing of His presence, the Holy Spirit, to dwell in His followers, He came in an undeniable fashion.  We have discussed the sound of the wind and the fire, and how they paralleled the manifestation of God’s presence at Sinai and the dedication of the tabernacle and the temple.  No one there thought it was just another day.  Something amazing happened.  So today I want to consider what happened next.  How did the people respond to this incredible event?

First, Luke says they were “amazed and astonished”.  We tend to use these words interchangeably today.  The Greek word we translate as ‘amazed’ describes people who have witnessed something so extraordinary that they are filled with wonder and awe.  It was a common reaction to Jesus’ miracles.  The word translated as ‘astonished’ carries more the idea of shock that something totally unexpected happened.  So, you could say the reaction was one of “shock and awe.”

Then, after Luke describes the nations the people came from, the scripture again tells how the people responded.  This time, it divides the people into two groups with different responses.  The first group has a similar reaction:

Acts 2:12   And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?”

Again, the word ‘amazed’ (awed, filled with wonder) and now ‘perplexed’, a different Greek word that means you can’t understand what has happened.  It is too difficult to unravel. Because they are bewildered and puzzled, they ask, “What does this mean?”

Perhaps you can relate to these people witnessing a religious service unlike any they have ever seen before.  Has this happened to you?   I was 15 years old and had been attending a youth group at a small Methodist Church for about six months.  It was like any other small Methodist Church in the southern US in the 1970s—traditional service with hymns and preaching.  Occasionally, someone in the congregation said “Amen” during the sermon, and everyone turned around to see who said it.  The youth group was singing the “new” worship songs like “Pass it On,” “Jesus is the Answer,” or “For Those Tears I Died.”   Yeah, we were the cool Jesus people.  To be honest, like almost every other 9th-grade boy who attended youth group, I was primarily there because I had a crush on a girl.

One Sunday night, the youth choir sang, and then the preacher stood up and began preaching. It was then that it happened.  A man in the second row stood up in the middle of the sermon and started speaking in tongues.  I had the “shock and awe” response.  And then after he finished, someone else stood up and translated what the first man said.  And I am still in ‘’shock” mode.  Then one of the youth on my pew stood up and started speaking in tongues. And it was, you guessed it, the girl (my secret crush).  From that point on, I honestly have no memory of what happened next. I was undone.  I had never heard of anything like this.  I am sure I had read about tongues in the Bible before, but I had never heard anyone discuss it, much less suggest that it might still happen.  I didn’t know how to process what I had just witnessed.  “Awed and Puzzled”?  Yes, that was me.  And that lasted for weeks.  I understand that the pastor addressed the issue in that service and the following weeks, and the church moved in a more charismatic direction; however, I never returned.  I was just too overwhelmed.  I had the question in my mind, “What does this mean?” but I didn’t stick around for the answer.

So all are shocked and awed by the fire and the wind, and hearing the people in their own language.  And then one group doesn’t understand what is going on, so they ask the question, “What does this mean?”  Then the other group: 

Acts 2:13   But others, mocking, said, “They are filled with new wine.”

They are mocking.  They are poking fun at God’s miracle.  They laugh and say these people are drunk.  They see something that does not fit into their paradigm, and they react with scorn.  Remember, all of these people there in the Temple that day consider themselves devout Jews.  Some have traveled for weeks to attend this religious festival.  They are in the Temple at 9 in the morning for worship.  You have got to be serious about God if you show up for a worship service before 9 am.  Yet some are scoffers.

So why are these devout Jews mocking?  God shows up in a way they never expected and in a way they could not explain, and their reaction is bitter.  Something different happened in church.  I can hear them now…”Woah!  We’ve never done it that way.  That’s not worship, because that is not the way I do it.”   “Next thing you know, they’ll be raising their hands and using TV screens in the church.” If God should show up in a way different from what you already know or have expected, be careful not to jump to mocking.

Galatians 6:7  (Amplified version)    Do not be deceived, God is not mocked [He will not allow Himself to be ridiculed, nor treated with contempt, nor allow His precepts to be scornfully set aside]; for whatever a man sows, this and this only is what he will reap.

You reap what you sow.  You don’t want to plant seeds of mockery.

This crowd of Jewish worshipers reacts in two distinctly different ways.  How would we react?   It is hard to say, but we can say how we react when we read about it.  We live in a world of reason.  We like to rationalize and explain things.  So often, most of the questions we ask when we read this story are about what exactly happened and how it happened.  We ask questions like:
What were they saying?
Was it unintelligible babbling, or were they speaking different languages they didn’t know?
Were the people all hearing it in their own language, no matter what they said?
Were they all saying the same thing?
If so, what were they saying?
How long did this go on?
Was it just the apostles or the 120 disciples?
Were the men and women both speaking?
Were you wondering about any of these questions?

I found many commentaries and articles that went on and on about answers to these questions.  But I’m not going to try to answer any of these questions, because I really think all of these are the wrong questions to ask at this point. Of those two groups, the ones who were receptive to the message, the ones who weren’t mocking, asked the right question: “What does this mean?” That is the question we should be asking. Remember when Jesus healed the man who was born blind?

John 9:1-3   As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

The disciples asked, “Whose fault is this? Blindness from birth must be the result of sin.” Jesus said that was the wrong question. The right question is, “How is God going to use this man’s blindness for good?” I don’t believe it is God’s will that anyone be born blind. God designed a world without sickness or blindness. Blindness is the result of living in a broken world. God is going to use this man’s blindness for good to show his work and bring glory to himself.

This is how we should view the world. War occurs, disasters happen, peace comes and goes, health issues emerge, friends pass away, babies are born, people help you, and others disappoint you. In all these moments, we shouldn’t ask the wrong questions. We shouldn’t ask whose fault it is. The correct questions are, “What does this mean for the kingdom of God?” or “What is God doing here?’

After the Spirit descends, Peter stands with the eleven and delivers a sermon. In this sermon, he shares what they don’t know. He explains that this is the fulfillment of the prophecy they’ve read for years, what Joel predicted would happen in the last days. The Spirit would be poured out on everyone—men, women, slaves, and free. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Jesus is the promised Messiah. Peter discusses Jesus’ ministry, His crucifixion, and His resurrection. This is what they didn’t know.   But God is doing something else that they would immediately recognize. All of them were Jews, very familiar with their scriptures. There is something else happening here that is so obvious that Peter doesn’t need to mention it.  But it may not be obvious to us, because the Old Testament scriptures don’t hold as much importance in our minds as they did to these people.  So let’s walk through it.

Remember the big story of the Bible: God created the world, and everything was good. Mankind introduced sin and death, which caused a separation between God and His people. Everything after Genesis 3 focuses on how God is correcting all the wrongs and fixing what was broken to restore His relationship with His people so that they can dwell together again.  

Peter explains in his Pentecost sermon that through Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension, God is repairing what went wrong in Genesis 3. Jesus overcomes both sin and death, then sends the Holy Spirit so God can dwell with humans again, even while we still live in a broken world.  Now look at what else is happening that Peter doesn’t mention. While Jesus is fixing what went wrong in Genesis 3 through the actions of the Spirit on that Pentecost, God is also fixing what went wrong in Genesis 11.  

First, let’s go back to our scripture.  Luke tells us :

Acts 2:1   When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place.

Then skip down to verse 5, where he adds some detail about who was there:

Acts 2:5   Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven.

Then, in verse 9, he lists all the places they came from.

Acts 2:9-11   Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians…

Here is a map of the places that Luke mentions; it is most of the known world at the time.  Devout Jews had traveled from all these places to gather in one place in Jerusalem.  Why does Luke go into such detail about who is there?  Because if you know your Bible, you know there is another place in the Bible where you can find a very similar list of nations.   It is way back in the Bible in Genesis 10 where the scriptures show how Noah’s sons and their descendants scattered to follow God’s command to be fruitful and fill the earth.  

Here is the area listed in Genesis 10 where all the people after Noah scattered to.  And three times in Genesis 10, it says these were all separated into their lands by their languages.

Now, don’t be confused, because this list of nations in Genesis 10 describes the results of what happened in Genesis 11.  In our culture, we like our books to be in chronological order.   First things first.  However, in Old Testament times, they weren’t as concerned with chronology, and therefore, you will see them present events out of chronological order for various reasons.  For example, Numbers 9 clearly happens exactly 1 month before Numbers 1.  Genesis 11 (the story of the tower of Babel) is the event that leads to the scattering of people to all the nations listed in Genesis 10.

Luke takes the time to list all the countries from which people came on Pentecost because he wants you to recall the other list in Genesis.  He wants you to see the connection between what happened in Genesis and what is happening at Pentecost.  Let’s back up and look at the pattern of events in the first 10 Chapters of the Bible.

Creation.  The spirit hovers over the chaos waters.   God makes dry land appear, then plants to grow, and populates the world with animals, and then places man.  He tells man to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the land.  After the fall, things go downhill very fast.  So in Genesis chapter 6:

Genesis 6:5-6   Yehovah saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And Yehovah regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.

“Every intention of the heart was only evil continuously.”  That’s bad.  How does God respond?

Genesis 6:7-8   So Yehovah said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of Yehovah.

But Noah found favor.  It is the Hebrew word ‘chen’, which means ‘grace’.  Noah found grace.

So God causes a flood.  We are meant to see the flood as a de-creation event.  It is creation backwards.  Man is destroyed, animals and plants are destroyed, and the chaotic waters again cover the land.  It is creation in reverse.  Only a remnant is saved through grace on an ark.  

Then, like a re-creation event, you start with everything in a watery chaos, and then the waters recede, revealing dry land. The emergence of plants follows this, and then animals and humans are placed back on the land, on Mount Ararat.  And God tells them again to be fruitful and fill the land.  

But just like after the first creation, things go downhill quickly.  Sin abounds.  And instead of filling the land, they rebel and choose to stay in one place, and build a city and a tower to make themselves great, to reach up to heaven and be great like God. You know this story:

Genesis 11:1-4    Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”

Let US make bricks, build OURSELVES a city and a tower.   Let US make a name for OURSELVES.   God has no place in the actions of the people building this great city and tower.   He is forgotten or ignored.  What God says doesn’t matter.  We can decide for ourselves what is right and wrong.   It is all about me!  God had commanded them to multiply and fill the earth, but they had forgotten this instruction; instead, they wanted to remain where they were.

They wanted to reach up to heaven.  That doesn’t sound like it has to be a bad thing.  After all, God’s goal is to dwell with humanity again, as He did in the Garden.  But they didn’t want to do it God’s way; they wanted to do it on their own, in their own way.  They thought they could reach up to heaven all by themselves.   They could do it without God. Just as in Genesis 3, humanity is attempting to exceed its limits. “Let us build a tower with its top in the heavens” sounds a lot like what the serpent said, “And you will be like God.”  “Let us make a name for ourselves.”  Then all people will honor us and give us praise and glory. This is Genesis 3 all over again on a larger scale.  

This is similar to Adam and Eve’s desire in Genesis 3.  Knowing the difference between good and evil is not a bad thing. It is really important to understand the difference.  That is one of our most important jobs as parents: to teach our children right from wrong.  But the problem in Genesis 3 is that they didn’t want God to tell them or teach them; they wanted to reach out and take it for themselves.  No thanks, God, we don’t need you to instruct us; we’ll decide right and wrong on our own.  They could accomplish this without God. They could be Gods themselves—their own gods.  That’s like a 2-year-old screaming at his parents, “But that’s not fair! I want to make my own rules!”  God wants them to learn to judge right and wrong.

However, it must be His own definition of right and wrong.  This first sin in Eden still plagues us today.  We think we can legislate morality.  But we are not at liberty to alter God’s definition of right and wrong when we feel like it.  We can’t change right and wrong by voting on it.  It doesn’t matter what Congress, the president, or the Supreme Court says.  There is only one that determines right and wrong, and it is not a court that calls itself ‘supreme’, but it is the Supreme Being, Yehovah God, King of the universe.  He is the sole judge of right and wrong.

We live in a great country and have enjoyed a long time of success and prosperity.  The danger with greatness is that you may forget how you got there.  Moses warned the people in Deuteronomy that when they became prosperous in the land, they would forget God.  They would forget God’s rules and decide they can make their own rules and be their own God.  We need to pray for repentance and revival in our country.  

Adam and Eve decide they can’t live by God’s rules.  They reject him as king, so God intervenes.  They are forced to leave the garden.  Now look how God intervened in Genesis 11: 

Genesis 11:5-7   And Yehovah came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. And Yehovah said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.”

I like how it says, “Yehovah came down to see the city and the tower…”  This is how fruitless their godless attempts were.  They are trying to reach up to heaven, and yet God has to come down to reach them.  God says their unity is a bad thing.  Being united is only good if we are united under God.  The people of Babel were united for themselves.  So God intervenes.  He divided their languages, which forces them to abandon their construction project as they can no longer communicate with each other.  They naturally separate into their various language groups and begin to fulfil God’s plan to fill the earth. 

At Pentecost, God is repairing what went wrong in Babel.  At Babel, there were people from every nation all in one place.  They were trying to reach up to God’s space. But that is impossible.  We can’t make our way to heaven on our own.  Then God divides their languages to end their communication and thus bring an end to their sinful project.  This causes people to scatter in order to fulfill God’s command to fill the earth.

At Pentecost, Luke tells us that they were devout men from every nation, all gathered together in one place.  And God reaches down to them by sending His Holy Spirit to abide with them. He removes the barrier of different languages so they can communicate.  And the communication is not man’s words, to glorify man, but God’s words to bring glory to God. Then the people go back to all the nations, where they will fulfill God’s Great Commission to disciple others by sharing the good news of Jesus.  God is again intervening in the world to redeem what went wrong.  

The more you study the Bible, the more you see these patterns.  The Bible is a collection of books intricately designed because God wants you to see how he consistently deals with His people.  The more we study His Word, the better we will recognize these patterns as well as God’s actions in our world today. And that is important.  These people in Acts 2 asked, “What does this mean?”  I am afraid that we often look at the events of the world around us, just as the disciples looked at the man born blind.  They were asking the wrong questions, “Whose fault is this?  Why was he born blind?”

Another war breaks out, more disasters occur, peace comes and goes, health problems develop, friends die, babies are born, people come to your aid, and others fail you. Throughout these times, we should not ask, “Whose fault is this?” or “Why did this happen?” The right question is, “What does this mean for the kingdom of God?” or “What is God doing here?”  Look for God moving every day, all around you.  Don’t live like the people in Babel, ignoring God or pretending He doesn’t exist.

I can’t tell you exactly what you would have heard if you were there on that Pentecost Sunday in the Temple in Jerusalem.  I can’t describe what the fire looked like or exactly what the noise sounded like.  I can’t tell you what the disciples said that everyone heard in their own language.  But that’s okay, because that is not what is important.  I can answer the question that those receptive to the disciples’ speaking asked.  “What does this mean?”

It means God’s plan to reunite His Spirit with humans is happening, just as Joel predicted.  It means we, like the disciples, can experience the presence of God living in us through the same Holy Spirit that descended upon them like fire. God is multiplying his presence in this world; the Kingdom of God is now.  The problem at Babel is now solved.  We can, through the Holy Spirit, be united under God..

After the Flood, God made a promise.  He put a bow in the sky and said

Genesis 9:11 Never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.

God would never again cover the earth with the waters to destroy. However, God did promise that He would cover the earth again.   With what?

Isaiah 11:9   For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of Yehovah as the waters cover the sea.”

And the same Holy Spirit that came down on the disciples is in you.  And we have that same Commission they had.  Every time we gather together in one place in our churches, as they did on that Pentecost morning, we worship as they worshiped.  And we should see the Holy Spirit in each other, manifested through the fruits of the Spirit.  And then when we walk out these doors, we will scatter to different parts of our world with the same goal.  To disciple all we come in contact with.  Let us flood the earth with the love, mercy, and grace of our God.  

June 15  – Shavuot (Pentecost) — Acts #2

David Chupp Acts , , , , ,

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.

June 15, 28 A.D.  – Shavuot (Pentecost) — The Year of the Lord’s Favor #87

David Chupp The 70 Weeks with Jesus Blog , , , , ,

Week 70 — Shavuot (Pentecost)
Acts 2:1-13

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.