The primary texts for this lesson are Luke chapters 23 and 24; John chapters 15, 16, and 20; Acts chapters 1 and 2.
On the third day after Jesus was executed by the Romans on a hill outside of Jerusalem, he appeared to his frightened followers in an upper room in the city where they were hiding. They were afraid that if their Teacher was arrested for what he taught, his disciples might be next. Amazingly, Jesus appeared before them in that upper room, demonstrating that he had risen from the dead and encouraging them not be afraid [Luke 24:36-49; John 20]. Jesus continued to visit them during the 40 days after that to prepare them for the Counselor to come to them after he ascended back to his Father [John chapters 20 and 21]. Jesus used two of Israel's religious celebrations to fulfil these events: Passover for his self-offering as the Paschal Lamb and Pentecost for the out-pouring of the Holy Spirit. These were recorded by Luke in the last two chapters of his Gospel (chapters 23 and 24) and the first two chapters of the Acts of the Apostles. During those fifty days, with the presence of Christ and the anointing of the Holy Spirit, Peter transitions from hiding in the upper room to declaring the truth about Jesus from the upper room to the crowds below.
Luke records what happened [Acts 2:1-42, ESV]:
1 When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. 2 And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3 And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. 4 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.
5 Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. 6 And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. 7 And they were amazed and astonished, saying, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? 9 Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, 11 both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.” 12 And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” 13 But others mocking said, “They are filled with new wine.”
14 But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them: “Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and give ear to my words. 15 For these people are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day. 16 But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel:
17 “‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; 18 even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy.
19 And I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke; 20 the sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day.
21 And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.’
22 “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know— 23 this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. 24 God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it. 25 For David says concerning him,
“‘I saw the Lord always before me, for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken; 26 therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced; my flesh also will dwell in hope.
27 For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One see corruption.
28 You have made known to me the paths of life; you will make me full of gladness with your presence.’
29 “Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. 30 Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, 31 he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. 32 This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses. 33 Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing. 34 For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says,
“‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, 35 until I make your enemies your footstool.”’
36 Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”
37 Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” 38 And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” 40 And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” 41 So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls. 42 And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
With that as our background, let's continue the lesson and consider some implications:
There were, of the many festivals that the people of Israel celebrated, there were three that were mandatory attendance for the men. And so, Passover being one of those three, the second being Pentecost, and the third being the Festival of Booths (or Tabernacles). So Passover, we remembered in the form of Easter 50 days ago, and Pentecost is what we are bringing to mind today. But the reason why I bring up the fact that the men of Israel had a mandatory pilgrimage to Jerusalem on the Festival of Pentecost is because this undergirds the story that you heard this morning from the Book of Acts.
Because we have the disciples gathered, probably in the upper room… (Note the chapter divisions that we have that are in our Bible are not put there by the initial writers, but we're something that came along in the Middle Ages. So, when we move from Acts chapter 1 to Acts chapter 2, there is that appointment, if you recall, of Matthias, to fulfill the 12th spot vacated by Judas. [Acts 1:23-26])
So, when it talks about “they,” we are thinking of both the 12 apostles and then the greater 120 disciples, most likely [Acts 1:15].
Now, you can go to the upper room in Jerusalem to this day, certainly the columns and the walls and all of that are not original (the architecture alone tells you that), but the floor itself may be actually that old. It's a good space, easily as large as the nave is here, and could well hold 120 people. This is the setting that we have. And the setting, I think (maybe if you're not visually minded; it's not that big of a deal, but I like to visualize what I read in scripture) - It has the disciples, certainly the twelve, if not the 120, gathered in the upper room.
They, of course, did not have glass windows. So, whatever was going on in the upper room, which would have been the second story above the street, would have been audible to those that were, you know, milling around in the streets below. Now, there are a lot of people milling around in the streets below, because of the mandatory pilgrimage to come from the known world to Jerusalem to celebrate Pentecost. Now, those people, the Medes and the Persians, and all of those that that Luke listed [Acts 2:7-11] were not coming with the expectation of Joel's prophecy being fulfilled. They were not coming with the expectation of the Holy Spirit bursting forth onto the scene and the dawn of the Church age coming into being. That is not what they were expecting. They were coming there strictly to fulfill their vows to celebrate Pentecost, or the, what's also known as the Feast of Weeks, or the Feast of First Harvest. They celebrated the beginning of the harvest and they celebrated the end of the harvest. This is the beginning of the harvest. So they came merely to do that.
But to their surprise, they hear strange sounds and familiar sounds. The strange sound would have been this mighty rush of wind. Maybe it was a still day. We don't know. Maybe there was not a breeze in the air. And suddenly they hear this unreal rush of wind, not like a natural wind, I guess. And then they hear something that they do recognize, come from… coming from those, they do not recognize.
Luke makes it a point that the people hearing their languages being spoken by these Galilean fishermen think it so odd that they accuse them of being drunk. Because, we know Galilean fishermen were not particularly well educated, so how would they know all of these foreign languages? Something is not right, of course. (In my experience alcohol does not help me with Greek or Hebrew in the least little bit. So how they came to that conclusion I do not know.) But anyway, so they accuse them of being drunk. But then, apparently, their ears are captivated by what they hear. They've gone from the oddity of this strange wind to the hearing of languages that they recognize from people who do not speak those languages. It's a powerful recognition of what is happening and why it's happening, even though they don't completely understand it.
Let's see what Luke has to say in [Acts] chapter two verse 11. He says, "We hear them declaring the wonders of God."
You see, so it's not just that they hear these languages being spoken by men, who ought not to be able to speak them, but then, their minds focus on what is being said. And these men filled with the Holy Spirit are "declaring the wonders of God."
Then Peter stands up. And possibly he comes out onto the porch there of the upper room looking out onto the road. And it [verse 14] says he addresses the crowd. But this address is a formal declaration. The word in the Greek there is what would be a formal address. Something kind of like what I'm doing here now, or what a president of a university would do to a crowd to introduce graduates. It's a formal address.
And yet, Peter has not rehearsed this. It's a formal address because he's been empowered by the Holy Spirit to communicate a message directly from God through the Holy Spirit. He proclaims this message to the crowd, and that message is a confirmation of what was spoken through the prophet Joel. Essentially, he says, "What the prophet Joel prophesied has come to pass" [Acts 2:16-21]. The two things that Peter tells us in this proclamation: that prophecy has been fulfilled and the Savior has come. It's the expectation that the believers in Israel and all the proselytes gathered there have been waiting for, for centuries, the fulfillment of prophecy and the coming of the Savior. And so, Peter's proclamation to them is, it has happened! Both of those things have happened: Prophecy has been fulfilled and Jesus is the Savior.
And then he goes on to convict them of their guilt: "This is the one whom you crucified" [Acts 2:23]. But he doesn’t leave them there. He shares with them that whoever calls upon the name of the Lord, verse 21, will be saved. So, there's proclamation, conviction, and an introduction to Jesus as the Savior. Pentecost is completely and perfectly, in-keeping with what Jesus said would happen when he promised that the Counselor would come [Luke 24:49 and John 15:26-27].
Let's take just a couple minutes and look at the end of John 15 and the beginning of John 16, the gospel lesson that you heard a moment ago. "When the counselor comes," Jesus says, "Whom I will send to you from the Father” (a perfect example of the Trinity right there) "whom I will send to you from the Father” [John 15:26]. Jesus describes him as “the Spirit of Truth.”
"The Spirit of Truth.” The Counselor is also the Spirit of Truth.
In other words, he is the one who proclaims Truth, who instructs his followers to be able to know truth and to proclaim it. And this is truth with a capital T. The truth about Jesus, what the revelation of God has been pointing toward for all of history. He says, "He will testify about me.” He will testify about Jesus. Here's the Spirit of Truth's mission statement: He will testify about Jesus. "And you also must testify, for you have been my eyewitnesses" [John 15:27]. So, to the disciples in the upper room before Pentecost, he's telling them what to expect, what we just heard in Acts chapter 2. The Spirit of Truth will come, he will testify about Jesus, and those who follow after the disciples must also testify to these things.
Now, he says there's going to be a result. Something is going to happen when the Spirit of Truth comes and this testimony is given. We got to hear Peter start the testimony, but we didn't get to hear what's happening yet in the crowds of people listening. Jesus says this is what's going to happen. [John 16,] verse 8, says “when he comes," the Spirit of Truth, "He will convict the world of guilt," in regard to three things: "Sin, righteousness, and judgment.” When the Spirit of Truth comes, he will convict the world. He will expose their guilt. And what underlies there is the hope of leading to repentance. He will expose their guilt and regard to sin, righteousness, and judgment. Well, what was the sin? Peter describes it later in Acts 2. They just rejected him.
Jesus says the same thing [John 16:9]. He says, "because men did not believe in me," they did not believe in Jesus. And the second thing, he will convict them regarding righteousness or justice. [John 16:10-11]
Was Jesus treated in a just way? Not only did they not believe in Him, but they treated Him with injustice. They arrested Him and crucified Him for no good reason, other than their own agendas. And He says, "And judgment, for this world, the evil one has been judged.” [John 16:11]
Do you see the trajectory there? There is the conviction of sin about believing in Jesus. There is the judgment, or the justice, regarding not representing Jesus correctly as to being the Son of God and being the Savior. He says the evidence of the fact that he is the Son of God and the Savior, is that He's ascended to heaven, sitting at the right hand of the God of His Father. It's the proof, the evidence of who He is. And He says, "It’s judgment of the evil one."
The sin of not recognizing Jesus leads to the sin of misrepresenting Him, which leads to, or embroils us in, a reign other than that of God. It's the reign of the evil one.
So, he says he's going to convict the world of those three things.
Well, the converse is there. The Spirit of Truth is to lead the believers his disciples to testify that Jesus is the Son of God, that he was convicted and hung on the cross unjustly for our sins to redeem us, to give us forgiveness of our sins through repentance and baptism, and then to enter into a life where Jesus is reigning, rather than Satan. He calls us to testify through the power of the Holy Spirit to those three things. We are also involved in the convicting, if you will, the leading of the world into understanding and recognizing their guilt, not just for the sake of making them feel guilty, but so though that they would turn and come to know Jesus and have life. For the church, the gifts given at Pentecost for the sake of our being enabled and empowered to share the Good News. That's the purpose of it.
The Church's mission is to point people to Jesus to continue that same testimony, that Jesus gave to the disciples. And remember when He says, He says, "It's…” (I’m paraphrasing.) He says, "It's good that you believe, but He says, "All the better, those who come after you and testify based on your testimony” [John 20:29]. Well, that's us! The testimony that we have received from the apostles, who received the testimony from Jesus, is still given to us and released in us through that same spirit, the Spirit of Truth, who enables us to recognize what is true and lively and good through that same Holy Spirit.
And so, as we celebrate the gift of Pentecost, the birth of the Church, this morning, we celebrate our participation in that, our empowerment, our enablement through the Holy Spirit, to continue that apostolic testimony: that Jesus died for our sins. He rose from the dead. He ascended into Heaven and He is still interceding on our behalf at the right hand of His Father.
Let us pray,
Father in heaven, we thank you and praise you for the gift of your Holy Spirit. Lord, we pray that you would inspire us, encourage, empower, and embolden us to continue the work that you gave to those first disciples that we too would speak in the power and the knowledge and the truth of the Holy Spirit, that others may be freed from the kingdom of darkness and brought into the kingdom of your dear Son. And we ask all this through Jesus' blessed and holy name. Amen.
This is a transcription of a sermon preached on Pentecost by Fr. Van McCalister.
