Dr. Rodney Plunket

This morning we continue our month of celebration.  On the first Sunday of this month we celebrated missions and took up a special contribution for the mission work supported by this church.  Last Sunday, the second Sunday of the month, we celebrated mothers on Mother’s Day.  Next Sunday, on Memorial Day, we will celebrate sacrifice.  But today we celebrate the Day of Pentecost.

On Easter, exactly seven weeks ago, we celebrated the day that Jesus was raised from the dead.  But Jesus’ followers did not begin preaching the message of Jesus immediately after His resurrection.  Jesus instructed his disciples to wait and not to start preaching until after they were baptized with the Holy Spirit.

Jesus was crucified at the time that the Jews celebrated Passover, near the end of the feast of unleavened bread.  That celebration ended on a Saturday.  The next big Jewish festival was the “festival of harvest,” which was also called the “festival of weeks” as well as Pentecost.  It was called the “festival of weeks” because the people were told to keep this festival on the first Sunday following the seven weeks after Pentecost.  It was called the festival of harvest because it celebrated the completion of the grain harvest.  It was called Pentecost because seven weeks equal forty-nine days; and, since the actual festival was held on the Sunday following those forty-nine days, it was actually fifty days after Passover, and Pentecost means fiftieth.

There were three pilgrimage festivals in the Jewish calendar.  One was Passover or the festival of unleavened bread.  The second was Pentecost.  And the third was the festival of ingathering.  In Old Testament (OT) times every Israelite male was to appear before God at the sanctuary to on each of these festivals.  In New Testament times when Jews lived all over the Roman world, it was impractical for every male to make everyone of those trips every year.  But these festival times still brought thousands of people into Jerusalem.  And it seems that many of those pilgrims who came to Jerusalem for Passover and might only get to the holy city once or twice in a lifetime, it seems that many of those people arranged their lives so they could stay for Pentecost as well.

So let’s step back in time.  Let’s go back to Jerusalem on the very first Day of Pentecost after the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.  Let’s imagine the thousands of people there from nations all over the world.  Let’s remember some of the verses that we read together just a short time ago.  Let’s remember the “sound like the blowing of a violent wind” that “came from heaven and filled the whole house where that little remnant of Jesus’ disciples were.  Let’s remember “what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them.”  Let’s remember that those disciples were able to speak in languages that they had not before known and with those languages they were able to proclaim the mighty acts of God.  Let’s remember that a crowd gathered and that these disciples who had received the Holy Spirit were able to communicate with every one of the diverse language groups represented there.  Let’s remember that these disciples were challenged by some skeptics in the crowd who said that what was being heard was just the result of drunkenness.  Let’s remember that the apostle Peter was the spokesman who stood up and defended his fellow believers.  He went back to the OT Book of Joel and argued that what the crowd was witnessing was the fulfillment of a prophecy found there, a prophecy that predicted that God would pour out God’s Spirit and that men and women would prophesy as a result.

I looked this past week at the Encyclopedia Britannica Online[1], and this is the second sentence in the article on Pentecost that I found there:

[Pentecost] commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit on the disciples, which occurred on the Jewish Pentecost, after the death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus Christ (Acts of the Apostles, chapter 2), and it marks the beginning of the Christian church’s mission to the world.

Broadway’s adult Bible classes recently completed a study of the Holy Spirit, and one of the truths emphasized in that study was that the Holy Spirit is given to generate Christian mission.  And we see that emphasis here.  It is clear that the Holy Spirit was given in Acts 2 to initiate the mission of proclaiming God’s Word to the world.  And that is one of the things we celebrate as we celebrate Pentecost.  We celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit who sends out God’s people into the world to proclaim the mighty acts of God.

But that is not all that is proclaimed in Acts 2.  That is not all that we celebrate on Pentecost.  Please take your Bible and follow along as I read Acts 2:22-36.

“You that are Israelites, listen to what I have to say:  Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did through him among you, as you yourselves know—this man, handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law.  But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power.  25 For David says concerning him,

          ‘I saw the Lord always before me,

                    for he is at my right hand so that I will not be shaken;

          therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced;

                    moreover my flesh will live in hope.

          For you will not abandon my soul to Hades,

                    or let your Holy One experience corruption.

          You have made known to me the ways of life;

                    you will make me full of gladness with your presence.’

“Fellow Israelites, I may say to you confidently of our ancestor David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day.  Since he was a prophet, he knew that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would put one of his descendants on his throne.  Foreseeing this, David spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, saying,

          ‘He was not abandoned to Hades,

                    nor did his flesh experience corruption.’

This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses.  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 both see and hear.  For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says,

          ‘The Lord said to my Lord,

          “Sit at my right hand,

                    until I make your enemies your footstool.”’  Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.”

Here the focus is on God’s work in Jesus.  Here the crowd is told that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ, the anointed one, the Messiah that the Jewish people had been looking forward to for generations.  Here the crowds are convicted of the sin of killing that Messiah.  But they are also told the Good News, the Good News that God raised their Messiah from the dead and that the Messiah now fulfills the prophecy in Psalm 110:1 which says, “The Lord says to my lord, “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.”  That first word “Lord” refers to God.  Back of it is God’s personal name in Hebrew, the name Yahweh.  The second word “lord” refers to the anointed one, the king like David.  And the Jews knew that the Messiah was to be a king like David.  The approved kings in the line of David were viewed, in this psalm, as being seated in a place of honor and authority at God’s right hand.  But none of them were raised from the dead to attain that position, none that is until Jesus.  Jesus was in the lineage of David; and Jesus, this sermon proclaims, was raised from the dead for the express purpose of being seated in that unique position.  That leads to the powerful finale of Peter’s sermon.  He says, “Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.”

The next section of the report of Pentecost tells of the response of Peter’s listeners, and the response was profound.  The people were so convicted by the grave sin they had committed that they that they cried out, “Brothers, what should we do?” (Acts 2:37).  Peter told them to repent and be baptized in the Name of Jesus, and he promised them the same Spirit whose power they had seen evidenced in all that had happened on that day.

And we celebrate this day of the first sermon proclaiming Jesus as Messiah, as Christ.  Jesus had kept it as secret as He could during His life, because it was not yet time.  He could not be proclaimed as Christ until He had truly won the victory over sin and death by being raised to God’s right hand.  But now it could be proclaimed and the message was about to spread all over the world by the power of God’s Holy Spirit.  Praise the Lord!  Thank God for Pentecost!!

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