Pentecost: The Coming of the Holy Spirit
God gave the Jews 7 feasts to celebrate back when He spoke to Moses from Mt. Sinai! Jesus fulfilled the purpose of the feasts.
There are 4 spring feasts that occur within a 7-week period. They are Passover, Unleavened Bread, Firstfruits, and Weeks.
- Passover – Jesus died during this feast, as the sacred lamb those blood delivers believers from the angel of death.
- Unleavened bread – the escape from Egypt. This corresponds to the two days that Jesus lay in the tomb, finishing His great work of salvation.
- Firstfruits – the offering of the first wheat harvest. Jesus rose on the first day of the Feast of Firstfruits. The Bible says that He was the firstfruit of those to be raised from the dead. These 3 feasts happen right in a row, making up the 4 days of Passover, Crucifixion, waiting, and the Resurrection. Then 50 days later, including Easter Sunday, comes the 4th Feast: The Feast of Weeks, or Shavu’ot [sha voo OT].
- Feast of Weeks, or Shavu’ot. The Greek is Pentecost, which is how we refer to it today. The Jewish Shavu’ot memorializes wheat harvest, and also the giving of the Law on Mt. Sinai, which was God’s grace to humankind through blood sacrifice. On the first Feast of Weeks after Christ’s ascension, the coming of the Holy Spirit would complete the work of grace that God started thousands of years earlier – but this time Jesus was the one-time blood sacrifice that saved anyone who believed.
Now let’s enter the story that Luke tells in Acts. Luke tells the story of the Ascension in some greater detail, including Acts 1:10-11. “10 They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. 11 “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”
The angels were referring to the 2nd Coming. But there was something else about to happen: the coming of the Holy Spirit.
Acts 2:1 says “When the day of Pentecost came…” – in the Greek, the word for “came” doesn’t just mean “arrive,” it means a “time of completion.” The Holy Spirit would come to complete and fulfill the promise of Christ that God would send His Holy Spirit to the disciples.
God’s timing is perfect! Just as Jerusalem was filled with Jews from all over the Roman Empire during Passover, it was filled again with Jews coming for the Feast of Weeks.
In a room in a house, probably about 120 people were gathered together. The Bible refers to that number in Acts 1:15. They consisted of the 11 remaining original disciples plus the newest disciples, Matthias. Mary, Jesus’ brothers, and other disciples were there too. Judas Iscariot had killed himself by then. Everyone in Jerusalem heard the news according to Acts 1:18, and had begun to call the field where Judas died the Field of Blood.
So at the day of Pentecost they were gathered together. I always thought they were in the Upper Room, because Acts 1 refers to that as their usual meeting place. But in Acts 2:5 hundreds of Jews heard the coming of the Spirit and the disciples – now the apostles – started speaking in tongues to the crowd. So where were the disciples? If they were hidden away in an upper room how could the crowd have heard them?
The answer is that they were in a house, as Acts 2:2 says. Substantial houses in Jerusalem had inner courtyards with opening to the streets. So if the hundred-plus disciples were gathered in the houses’ ground floor courtyard, then they were open and visible from the street.
While they were gathered — and there were crowds outside in the street — there came a sound like a violent wind. Note that the wind “came down from heaven” – it was blowing vertically!
So the crowds would have heard the violent wind! They may have gathered around just to see if the house would fall down!
The closest in the crowd would have seen that but everyone heard the sound of the violent wind – then they heard something really miraculous: over 100 people shouting and proclaiming Christ… and each listener in the crowd heard what they were saying in the hearers’ native language! And the disciples sure as heck didn’t speak all those languages. The Jews of Judea would have spoken Aramaic, the common dialect of Judea that was a mixture of Hebrews, Syrian, and Chaldaic. (In fact, Matthew wrote his gospel in Aramaic.) Many of them would have understood Greek, which was the most common language across the Roman Empire. But the Bible doesn’t say it was Aramaic or Greek. It says it was every person’s native language! They were listed in v. 9: Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome Cretans and Arabs!
At the same time, what looked like tongues of fire rested on the disciples’ heads! They saw the tongues of fire all together at first, and must have stared up at them! Then the fire separated and came to rest on each one of them individually. Acts 2:3. Note that “tongue” is used deliberately here. The Hebrew word for tongue did not just mean the physical tongues in our mouths, but the WORD. The WORD of God rested on the disciples!
And Peter began to preach. Peter, who betrayed Christ. Peter, who sank in the water. Peter, who was the subject of Jesus’ saying “Get you behind me, Satan!” Peter the clown, Peter the fisherman, Peter the clumsy – PETER THE ROCK UPON WHICH I SHALL BUILD MY CHURCH. Inspired by the Holy Spirit, Peter immediately began preaching to the gathered crowd. He quoted the Hebrew Scriptures and told them about Jesus Christ. And on that very day, in that very place, 3000 people were saved.
This is the same power available to us today!