Luke 24: 44-53
Acts 2:1-21 [MSG]
When the Feast of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Without warning there was a sound like a strong wind, gale force—no one could tell where it came from. It filled the whole building. Then, like a wildfire, the Holy Spirit spread through their ranks, and they started speaking in a number of different languages as the Spirit prompted them.
There were many Jews staying in Jerusalem just then, devout pilgrims from all over the world. When they heard the sound, they came on the run. Then when they heard, one after another, their own mother tongues being spoken, they were blown away. They couldn’t for the life of them figure out what was going on, and kept saying, “Aren’t these all Galileans? How come we’re hearing them talk in our various mother tongues?
Parthians, Medes, and Elamites;
Visitors from Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia,
Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia,
Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene;
Immigrants from Rome, both Jews and proselytes;
Even Cretans and Arabs!
“They’re speaking our languages, describing God’s mighty works!”
Their heads were spinning; they couldn’t make head or tail of any of it. They talked back and forth, confused: “What’s going on here?” Others joked, “They’re drunk on cheap wine.”
That’s when Peter stood up and, backed by the other eleven, spoke out with bold urgency: “Fellow Jews, all of you who are visiting Jerusalem, listen carefully and get this story straight. These people aren’t drunk as some of you suspect. They haven’t had time to get drunk—it’s only nine o’clock in the morning. This is what the prophet Joel announced would happen:
“In the Last Days,” God says,
“I will pour out my Spirit
on every kind of people:
Your sons will prophesy,
also your daughters;
Your young men will see visions,
your old men dream dreams.
When the time comes,
I’ll pour out my Spirit
On those who serve me, men and women both,
and they’ll prophesy.
I’ll set wonders in the sky above
and signs on the earth below,
Blood and fire and billowing smoke,
the sun turning black and the moon blood-red,
Before the Day of the Lord arrives,
the Day tremendous and marvellous;
And whoever calls out for help
to me, God, will be saved.”
HOW TO BECOME A CHRISTIAN - PART 3
INTRODUCTION:
Welcome to the Day of Pentecost, when the Church celebrates the day the Holy Spirit, the Comforter who, according to Jesus, recorded in John 16:13, “will take you by the hand and guide you into all the truth there is,” was poured out on the disciples. Peter preached the first sermon, three thousand souls believed and were baptized, and the church began spreading the Gospel. A day almost as significant as Christmas or Easter, and one might suppose I would deflect the series we’ve been following in Acts to address this day directly, but I think our theme, “How to Become a Christian - Part 3,” fits the bill very nicely. After all, it’s about three thousand new believers. Asking how they, the first big batch of new converts to Jesus, became Christians seems like a promising avenue to follow.
In the first two Sundays, we’ve seen how Paul was led to Lydia of Thyatira and the Jailer of Philippi without any awareness of who they were or expectation of converting them. God knew them and had prepared their hearts and minds to receive the word, much as Cornelius the centurion, the first Gentile believer, had been prepared to meet Peter and receive the Holy Spirit. God doesn’t seem to have let Paul in on the plan. Probably because, knowing what was to be done, he would have gone off on his own recognizance and mucked up the whole affair. Instead, God uses Paul’s misguided tendencies and frailty to bring him to the right places, in the right ways and at the right times, to accomplish a miraculous end and far more than Paul ever could have conceived or imagined.
Not bad for a guy who didn’t take a course in foreign missions at Presbyterian College. But today, we’re going to look at a different kettle of fish. Not individual conversions, which, although they had far-reaching implications, were the kind of mass transformations seen in Billy Graham crusades and the travelling tent meeting revivals of the last century. Surely, we’ll finally find the type of organized and formalized method of evangelism that we can apply to our Church today. Or maybe we won’t.
SERMON:
Wouldn’t it be nice if, when we decided that we needed some new blood in the Church, some extra hands to do some of the work or maybe just some extra warm bodies to fill up the pews, we could walk over to the big shopping mall on a Saturday afternoon and start praising God in a few languages like French and English, of course, but maybe some German or Cameroonian as well, and then someone would preach a sermon quoting a prophet like Joel as Peter did, and we’d expect that a few hundred people would come and join our little gathering the following Sunday. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works, nor how it worked for the first disciples on Pentecost long ago.
Let's start by clearing the air about Pentecost. It has nothing to do with the coming of the Holy Spirit, and that it falls on the 50th day after Easter is a pure coincidence. The festival that was being celebrated in Jerusalem at that time is called Shavuot (shuh-voo-owt), the Feast of the Weeks, and was celebrated on the 50th day, or seven weeks, after the sheaf offering of the harvest, which by this time in Jewish history, was celebrated during Passover.
In the Hellenistic days of Jesus, it took on the Greek name Pentecost, meaning 50th. Since, based on the moon's phases in the Jewish calendar, the movable feast of Passover also determines when we celebrate Easter, our Pentecost celebration of the coming of the Holy Spirit coincides with the Jewish Pentecost, Shavuot. So next time you wonder why the coming of the Holy Spirit is called Pentecost, just remember the day was named long before the Church appropriated it for their own. Let's look at what Luke tells us about this miraculous Day of Pentecost.
As we read, chapter two begins with, “When the Feast of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place.” What that “one place” was doesn’t seem important, as Luke does not elucidate it, except that it was in Jerusalem. Immediately before this, in chapter one, Luke describes the gathering of the apostles and some 120 disciples to choose, by drawing straws, a venerated method at the time of leaving the decision in God’s hands, the replacement apostle for Judas Iscariot, who had committed suicide after betraying Jesus. I’ve thought sometimes that this might be a better way to choose our church leaders, but that’s a sermon for another time.
Luke tells us the apostles were staying in the ‘upper room’. Ostensibly, the same room was used by Jesus for the Last Supper. Whether this is where the whole gathering of 120 met or it was somewhere else, we don’t know. Nor do we know if any of these places is the one referred to as we begin chapter two. And unfortunately, Luke is also ambiguous about who was present for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost. The last thing he mentions at the end of chapter one are the now twelve apostles, so when he begins chapter two saying, “they were all together,” we are left wondering if it was the whole company of 120 believers in Jerusalem or only the apostles in the upper room.
Later, they are referred to by the crowd as “all Galileans,” which certainly wouldn’t be true for all 120 disciples staying in Jerusalem. Luke mentions explicitly that when Peter stood up to speak to the crowd, he was supported by the other eleven, which would leave us wondering what the rest of the 100-odd disciples who were smitten by the Holy Spirit were doing. Contrary to most commentators, I’m inclined to think that this manifestation of the Holy Spirit is specific and limited to the apostles. However, as I said, Luke is vague and I think deliberately so. Who knows, we might make too much of this.
It is important to recognize that the whole Pentecost event, which we, the Church, make so much of, making it one of the four principal celebrations, Christmas, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost, is described in only three verses. It is a brief prelude to the subsequent events that unfold in the rest of the chapter. As Luke begins in verse five, saying, “Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven,” we are struck by the complete change of tenor and focus. It’s as if he began the story of the events of Pentecost from here and then later added the actions of the Holy Spirit to explain why the Jews visiting for Shavuot came together and heard the Galileans speaking in their own several languages.
This momentous event of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost is almost a footnote for Luke. He wants us to focus on Peter’s sermon, which uses the prophecy from Joel 2:28-32. For Luke, the proclamation of the Word of God is the central event. The mighty sound of the wind was to get the attention of the crowds, which Luke states specifically. The words transcribed as tongues of fire appearing over the heads of the disciples can, as we see from Peterson’s translation, “The Message”, we read this morning, be taken as simply an expression meaning it spread to all of them like wildfire.
What is happening here is the miraculous empowering of ordinary believers in the hands of the Holy Spirit to do extraordinary things. In many different languages, for the understanding of all who had gathered at the sound of a wind, they were “describing God’s mighty works!” They were prophesying, as the prophecy of Joel that Peter quotes states. Certainly not something they wanted to happen when they met in that one place.
Part of what Peter quoted from the prophet Joel goes,
“When the time comes,
I’ll pour out my Spirit
On those who serve me, men and women both,
and they’ll prophesy.”
This is precisely what was happening. Prophecy isn’t fortune telling, predicting the future; it’s declaring God’s word. Prophecy reveals what God is doing in our world, what He has done, and in some cases, what He will do.
The Holy Spirit inspired Peter to reach into his memory for this scripture from the Book of Joel. We don’t know if, for some reason, he’d memorized it long ago or had just recently been moved to learn this passage. A fisherman who could read and write would have been rare in Galilee. Peter would have had to have had it read to him by a scribe at some time so he could commit the text to memory.
The thousands of visitors to Jerusalem that have come from all over the Roman Empire to celebrate Shavuot are described by Luke as “devout pilgrims from all over the world.” This isn’t Disney Land. They’re not arriving after a gruelling 3-hour flight to stay in a 5-star hotel before going out to see the sites of Jerusalem, as is described of some who attend Fifteen Thousand Dollar Holy Land tours. These were dedicated Jews seeking a sign of the kingdom of God. A change in the world that would say He’s coming, the prophecies will be fulfilled. They would travel weeks and in some cases months over roads endangered by wild animals, weather, and bandits, or endure the hardships and perils of travel by sea, not to mention the expense of either. Peter’s audience were seekers whose hearts God had already prepared. They looked only for a sign.
A sign the Holy Spirit afforded them. A sound like a mighty wind to draw them together, and a dozen uneducated Galileans who were suddenly articulate in declaring the mighty works of God in over a dozen languages so that all could understand. Yet, what made this truly a sign was that it would have been unnecessary. Although from all over the empire, they were all Jews and proselytes, converted Gentiles, and they would all have spoken the common language, Aramaic, that Jesus used—the language Peter used to preach his sermon, which they all understood perfectly well.
And it was this that brought to Peter’s mind the great eschatological prophecy of Joel, which, we can assume if Peter knew it, was probably a scripture that was well known amongst all Jews and why not. It’s all about God’s faithful restoration of His people in the last days. It’s precisely the kind of scripture those pilgrim-seekers who had gathered in Jerusalem for Shavuot would have known and been yearning for.
So, here we are back at our original question, “How did three thousand people get converted and baptized on the Day of Pentecost?” Well, I don’t think we could say it was the result of the organizing board of the church of 120 believers who, following a program from the national outreach committee, set up a plan to spread the gospel using the opportunity afforded by the many visiting Jews for Shavuot. Hardly this! They were cloistered away in a room by themselves, keeping, what appears to be, as low a profile as possible. Encouragingly, this is much like many of our churches today.
Luke, in his text, focuses on Joel's prophecy, and it’s important that we do as well. As I said, it begins, “In the last days, … I will pour out my Spirit.” Peter says, “This is what the prophet Joel announced would happen.” So what is most significant is that this day of Pentecost, over two thousand years ago, was the beginning of the apocalypse, the last days. Luke is telling us that these are the days in which we live. “Your sons will prophesy, also your daughters; Your young men will see visions, your old men dream dreams. When the time comes, I’ll pour out my Spirit On those who serve me, men and women both, and they’ll prophesy.”
I like that part, “men and women both.” The church justifiably wears a bad reputation for demeaning and snubbing the role of women over the centuries and even into the present. It’s nice to know that Luke and the early church got it right.
Like the other converts we studied, Lydia and the jailer of Philippi, the three thousand who were saved that day were all people known by God, seekers who knew their lives and this world were not as they should be. They sacrificed much, looking for exactly what God prepared and inspired Peter to present to them, illuminating the prophecy of Joel. Peter and the others weren’t even looking to draw attention to themselves. They would have preferred to remain sequestered in the room, but quietly hidden was not what God had in mind.
I think we lose sight of the real and vital work of the Holy Spirit in this when we make it about some ethereal, otherworldly outpouring of mysterious tongues of fire. In a real and tangible way, God the Holy Spirit did what was needed to get the disciples out into the open, the centre of attention, where He needed them to be so that the Jews who came together as a result could hear the Word of God, the young men prophesying as the book of Joel promised.
So, how do you become a Christian? Well, God calls you. Through whatever means necessary, God tailors a plan of salvation custom-made just for you. Whether you’re Lydia, the Philippi jailer, or one of the pilgrims coming to Jerusalem for Pentecost, something in your heart is seeking Jesus amongst all the turmoil, lies, and stresses of life. I'm not on my way to save you because I don’t know who you are any more than Paul knew Lydia or the jailer. But God will prepare someone to bring you His Word, and He’ll do so in ways we could never conceive or imagine, bringing you together with them, because as it says in the prophecy of Joel, Peter preached, “And whoever calls out for help to me, God, will be saved.” That’s how to become a Christian.
Amen
