THE DAY OF PENTECOST.
John 20:19-23. “On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you!’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. Again Jesus said, ‘Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.’ And with that he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven’” (John 20:19-23).
Acts chapter two is the climax of the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the Bible. All the teaching in redemptive history on the Holy Spirit before this is a preparation for it, and everything that follows is enhanced and understood because of this event. It is an Everest in redemptive history, as crucially significant as the incarnation of God the Son, his crucifixion and his resurrection. In all our studies so far, the prophecies of the Old Testament and the promises of the Lord Jesus, we have been made ready for this event. We’ve been looking at the Spirit of God in the gospel of John and that provides my key to enter the day of Pentecost.
In the Upper Room on the first Sunday an incident is recorded in the new life of the risen Jesus. His Father has vindicated him, given him a name above every name, the one whom men declared to be an evil man, a criminal, one worthy of crucifixion. He is risen from the dead. Jesus of Nazareth is being set before us as the conqueror of the grave. He is more powerful than death, and here in the Upper Room he is reinforcing his claim to be the one who will baptize every believer with the Holy Spirit. That is how John the Baptist introduced him to the world three years earlier, and just the previous Thursday before Sunday’s Upper Room Jesus himself had been telling them that he would be giving them the Spirit - the Comforter, the Advocate, the Paraclete.
Now he is sending them into the world just as the Father had sent him thirty three years earlier. His work of humiliation is over but their work has just begun. They are to confront an indifferent and hostile world with the gospel of the forgiveness of sins. Then the Lord Jesus did something which he had never done before or repeated again. He accompanied his words by sharply blowing out air from his lungs upon them. In that act he was doing two things, he was visibly and audibly demonstrating his authority to give them the Holy Spirit, and he was showing them the provision he would make for them.
What do we have here? Is this a pre-Pentecost Pentecost? Certainly no one can question that those apostles were spiritually strengthened each time they met with the risen Christ. They must have been very encouraged and got new assurance because they were again confronting this unbelievable event - Jesus Christ risen from the dead. Each time they understood something else about who he was, his victory over the grave and the meaning of his death. The risen Christ was constantly answering their questions and he was ministering each time to them. You can see the contrast between them and the absent Thomas after this happened. They say to him, “We have seen the Lord,” (v.25), but he had missed it and so he was full of doubts. I am saying that this appearance and our Lord breathing on them was a wonderfully strengthening occasion, and there are many such kinds of experiences in the Christian life, but we may not say that this was the occasion when the apostles were regenerated. That cannot possibly be what Jesus is doing here, for a number of reasons.
i] This is simply one of those times when the risen Jesus met with some of the disciples, like his meeting with Cleopas and his companion on the road to Emmaus, or Mary in the Garden, or with his brother James. These were occasions when some disciples were present and others were absent. So it wouldn’t be suitable on such an occasion for Jesus to give the regenerating Spirit to some of the twelve while not giving him to others who were absent. He soon stamps some order on their coming and going telling them not to break up and go off in all directions, but stick together, certainly not leaving Jerusalem for the next few days. All of them were to wait for the coming of the Spirit. The description of the day of Pentecost begins with an emphasis on the fact that none was absent from Jerusalem; “They were altogether in one place.” No one was off somewhere else. No one failed to receive the Holy Spirit because he wasn’t there.
ii] Again, this divine inbreathing could not be regeneration because Jesus had already told these disciples of that they had been made clean (John 13:10). In other words, they had been definitively washed and cleansed from the guilt and defilement of sin. All except Judas had known a growing internal work of the Holy Spirit purifying them and setting them apart. Jesus does not need to give them the Holy Spirit again in order for them to receive life from heaven. They already have that life; they’ve had inward illumination to confess him as the Christ the Son of the living God; they’ve confessed him before men when they’ve preached and healed in his name by the Spirit.
iii] Again, can’t you see that Jesus is dealing on that occasion in the Upper Room with the theme of their future mission, not with regeneration? He is saying, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you” (v.21). Here are a group of young and relatively inexperienced men. How were they going to cope in a hostile world? How could they possibly get to their feet on a block of stone in front of thousands of people and preach to them? It is then while feeling their inadequacies and thinking of such scary activities we are told in this passage in John, “With that he breathed on them and said ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’” (v.22). Jesus himself would make provision for them; he would give them the Spirit for service, for making known the good news of Jesus. The Spirit did not need to be given them for life because they were already washed and clean, but they did need him for the work that lay before them. They would need him every single day. They would need to cry to the Lord each day, “Breathe on me breath of God fill me with life anew . . .” The disciples were going off to preach and assure people everywhere that if they only entrusted themselves to the Lord Jesus Christ their sins would be forgiven. Every day they needed to say this, and say it with the wonder of hearing it themselves for the first time. They must never grow stale, and for that they needed the Lord Jesus as it were to breathe upon them afresh. In other words, he must constantly provide for them personal spiritual resources - discernment, energy, authority to preach, to evangelize and pastor.
iv] Again, we must see increasingly clearly that the God-man couldn’t give the Spirit until he had ascended, and been welcomed to the Father, and enthroned at the right hand of the majesty on high. That has not yet happened and that was God’s order. It would occur in less than forty days. Let me use this illustration, that there will probably be a day coming when many of us will see the Prince of Wales in his coronation regalia in Westminster Abbey. Then he will seem very regal as the newly crowned king - compared to occasions when he is seen skiing or meeting local government officials. Those times would not be suitable occasions to present him to the world as King. So it is that the little Upper Room was not the place, and a small group of disciples were not the audience to be a recipient of the revelation of the glory which their Saviour King was to enjoy. It was a place for a striking sign of that imminent event, but not for the reality. Jesus must first ascend to heaven and be seated in the midst of the throne. There the God-man will receive access to the Spirit from his Father and then he will pour the Spirit forth in a manner which will give Christ much glory in the world. The breathing on them of the Spirit in the Upper Room is a little sign of this. He must ascend before he can send the Spirit. Jesus made that clear in John chapter seven speaking of the future coming of the Spirit, “for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified” (Jn. 7:39).
So this breathing on the disciples is a visual acted prophecy – just like some of the acts of Jeremiah the prophet. You remember Jeremiah warned Jerusalem she’d be destroyed, and then God added to Jeremiah’s words to the people a sign he had to do before the people. He told Jeremiah to take his linen belt and bury it, and then later on to recover it, but by that time the linen belt was utterly ruined; it was completely useless. So the word of judgment on Jerusalem was underlined by that sign which was seen by the people. The ruined linen belt also prophesied to them that both the nation of Judah and the city of Jerusalem were going to be ruined. So I am saying that in the Upper Room Jesus, by the sign of the blowing upon them with his breath, was telling them in that visible action that he himself would surely give to them the Spirit for the work that lay before them; “receive the Holy Spirit.” So that is my bridge from the end of the gospel of John to Pentecost. We can then turn over three pages in our New Testaments and we come to Acts chapter two.
Some of you would guess that the word ‘Pentecost’ must have something to do with the number five, because of the syallable ‘pent.’ Pentecost means ‘fiftieth,’ and so fifty days after the Passover (when Jesus had been crucified), the day of Pentecost came along every year. The Olympics are upon us and one of the events is called the ‘pentathlon’ a contest of five events, wrestling, discuss throwing, javelin throwing, jumping and running. You know that the headquarters of the American armed forces in Washington is the Pentagon because the building has five sides. The first five books in the Bible are called the ‘Pentateuch.’ Those of you who have been studying English in school have been taught about ‘iambic pentameters’ where there is a fivefold rhythm to the line of such a poem as Gray’s Elegy; “The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.”
So for forty days the risen Jesus had met with his disciples, and then he ascended to heaven. Before he went he told them to wait in Jerusalem, and it would not be a long wait. ‘In a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 1:5). This happened about ten days later, fifty days after the cross and resurrection. Now why did God make them wait? I know that the Sovereign God often does test our obedience doesn’t he? God generally makes his people wait. That seems to be the usual way God operates, but it was not mere sovereignty that made the church wait for ten more days in Jerusalem.
i] Let me suggest to you first of all that a new phenomenon had entered heaven. A new sight was witnessed in heaven, of a person who had never been seen there before. There was the body of a special man in heaven, a glorified man, a God-man and he was seated in the midst of the throne right in the centre of heaven absolutely dominating heaven and earth. Before that time, surrounding God, there were the angels (who are all spirits), and there were also the spirits of just men made perfect, all the redeemed people of God waiting for the day of resurrection, and there was also Enoch and Elijah (and we don’t know too much about their condition in heaven but we know that they had not passed through death). But now in the midst of the throne there was a man who was also God the Son. As much man as if he were not God, and as much God as if he were not man and yet both God and man in one person. Of course, as the eternal Son of God he had been in the midst of the throne from all eternity, and then 33 years earlier his divine nature had been joined to a human nature in the womb of Mary, not temporarily but for ever and ever, and thus he is still at this very moment in heaven. There is a man in the glory, a real man with wounds still gaping wide, and yet one who has been glorified. All that his Father can do to make him radiate with the divine beauties of heaven has been done. “Sit at my right hand right until the end of this age – until I will make your enemies your footstool.”
So I am saying that it was right and becoming that there was a ten day period for the prolonged delight of the Father to be expressed in the return of his Son to glory, all his sufferings completed. There was fulness of joy in God’s presence again. Jesus’ blessed enthronement at the heart of heaven was consummated; Father, Son and Spirit were united in a unique sense again. There is no rush with God. A thousand years is like a day, but God did not make the church wait for a thousand years before Jesus received from the Father the right to begin to send forth the promised Holy Spirit to regenerate and sanctify. There was inter-trinitarian joy in heaven for this period of ten days, something our Lord had anticipated, something that had sustained him in his humiliation– “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross.” There was the mutual delight while his Father showed all of heaven’s love to the Son, and Jesus displayed all his love as the God-man to the Father and to the Holy Spirit. They were welcoming him back from his great humbling of himself even to the death of the cross.
ii] Again, let me also underline the importance of it being on the Feast of Pentecost that this outpouring of the Spirit occurred. This was a Jewish holiday, and one of three feasts on which the faithful were summoned to go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The city would have been packed. Josephus, the Jewish historian who lived at this time, tells us that often the city of Jerusalem whose population was normally 150,000 people would be swollen to over a million people. The suburbs were filled, and out on the hills surrounding Jerusalem the pilgrims who had come from all over the world would be camping out. Wasn’t it significant that when there were great crowds of people coming together, far more than had ever heard the Lord Jesus speak, that then Christ sent forth the Holy Spirit in abundance on Jerusalem, before all these witnesses? It was not done in a corner. “You will do greater things than I did,” he had said, one meaning of which was that they would speak to multitudes of people in Jerusalem and all over the world, and thus it has been ever since.
But something else was significant about this feast. It was never called ‘Pentecost’ by the Jews; that was the Greek title. The Jews referred to it by two titles as ‘the feast of weeks’ (seven weeks since Passover) or ‘the feast of harvest’ when believers offered up to the Lord the first fruits of the new grain. This was one of the two harvest periods the Jews knew each year following the early and the latter rains, and it was at this harvest celebration that the Spirit of God was poured out. This particular Pentecost was saying “There’s going to be a real cosmic harvest. See here in a day three thousand men gathered into God’s garner. They are merely the first fruits of a glorious new harvest. They are going to be gathered in from all over the world.” This first fruits was a sign of what lay ahead, when the earth would be filled with the glory of the Lord. The Holy Spirit’s work at Pentecost was a sign from heaven of a 2,000 year long harvest of which we are a part today; it was the first of many such harvests.
Harvests in the Bible and in our experience are always joyful days, and Pentecost, after the sober feast of the Passover was always one of happiness. In fact God commanded the people to rejoice at Pentecost; “Celebrate the Feast of Weeks to the Lord your God . . . and rejoice before the Lord your God” (Deut. 16:10 & 11). Gifts were given at this feast rather as Christmas Day is celebrated now. This was the time they gave gifts to children, servants, the fatherless and widows. Pentecost was a day to look forward to. What joyful day in all the Jewish calendar could be more appropriate as this day for the coming down from heaven of the Spirit of God? God who had given his Son now also gave his Spirit to all classes of people present, old and young, man-servants and woman-servants, Jew and Gentile believers. What a gift! This greatest of all gifts was received with holy joy unspeakable and full of glory because having the Spirit means everlasting life; possessing the Spirit of God means salvation from death; it is the earnest of obtaining heaven itself; it is the down payment of being with God in eternity. So it was at the Feast of Pentecost that the Holy Spirit was poured out.
iii] The Day of Pentecost always fell on the first day of the week, on the day after the old Sabbath had ended. The Sadducees were in charge of the Temple calendar, and that was rigorously maintained, and so we know that it was at 9 o’clock on Sunday morning that the Spirit of God was poured forth. The Seventh day Sabbath had been the sign of the old covenant, but now on the Lord’s Day new covenant blessings came down upon the church. The old Sabbath had given way to something better. What the Old Testament longed for was now there. The Day of Pentecost had, in fact, arrived; the fifty days since the Passover had gone by, one by one, and the feast of Pentecost was fully come, chronologically and legally. What had been promised as taking place at the completion of a certain epoch did take place.
Now the Scriptures don’t make a lot of Pentecost being the Lord’s Day, but I think it is encouraging to consider that every gospel congregation not only has a weekly Easter, because we celebrate on the first day of the week that our Saviour rose from the dead on a Sunday. The church also has a weekly Pentecost, that it was on a Sunday that the Spirit of God was poured out on the people of God and they became the fellowship of the Spirit. When we meet together we are acknowledging, “By myself I couldn’t cope with the next six days without the Holy Spirit giving me energy to live a Christ-honouring life. Pour out your Spirit on me again today Lord.” We remember that on the first day of the week he filled the people of God with the Spirit and we ask him to fill us so that we may serve him and serve the world in the power of the Holy Spirit.”
What parallels there are between the advent of the Son and the advent of the Spirit! I am sure you have noticed ways in which the two comings correspond to one another. Both Son and Spirit came from heaven, and both comings were accompanied by mighty signs. When the Son was born in Bethlehem the archangel appeared and spoke to shepherds announcing the Messiah’s birth, “and suddenly there was with the angels a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying glory to God in the highest and peace on earth to men on whom his favour rests.” The fields around the stable were filled with millions of angels. Then, when the Spirit came, there were also supernatural signs, the sound of a rushing mighty wind, cloven tongues as of fire appeared on the heads of the disciples and they found they could speak in other languages and tell all men the mighty works of God.
Again, these two comings were not unexpected events. They did not come out of the blue; the coming of the Messiah was predicted by psalmists and prophets; the people received great promises about one who would bruise the serpent’s head and that the Servant of God would be bruised for our sins. But the pouring forth of the Spirit was also predicted by the prophets, by Joel and Ezekiel. Then there were also heralds who announced that these events would be soon upon them. John the Baptist spoke of the imminent arrival of the Son of God, and Jesus himself spoke of the coming of the Spirit “not many days hence.”
Again, the timing and planning of both these events was perfect. It was when the fulness of time had come that God sent forth his Son, and when the day of Pentecost had fully come God sent forth his Spirit. Signs from heaven accompanied both these events. An extraordinary star in the sky hung over the place where the young child Jesus was to be found, and a rushing mighty wind filled the whole house where the Spirit had come.
Again, the Son of God came to the earth as the incarnate one when the eternal Word became flesh, and the Spirit of God also came to earth to become incarnate in all the redeemed people of God, the Spirit actually taking up his abode in men while the Son of God took up his abode amongst men.
Again, when both Son and Spirit came it caused in the unbelieving world great perplexity and worry. When Christ was born in Bethlehem King Herod was troubled and all Jerusalem with him, and when the Holy Spirit came to the city at Pentecost “a crowd came together in bewilderment” (v.6) or deeply troubled. Again when Christ came he wasn’t known; he was rejected by men and unappreciated. So also when the Spirit came the world could not accept him as the third member of the Godhead because it neither saw him nor knew him (Jn. 14:17).
Again the roles of both Son and Spirit were alike. The Son honours the Father in all the Son does. The Spirit glorifies Christ in all the Spirit does. The Father says to men about his Son, “Listen to him.” The Son says to men about the Spirit, “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches” (Rev. 2:7). “Listen to the Son,” says the Father. “Listen to the Spirit,” says the Son. So I am saying that there are such parallels as these between the first appearings of both Son and Spirit in the world. Surely this is something we should expect because both are equal in power and glory as divine persons of the Godhead.
Let us begin to look at the heart of this matter. Why this extraordinary event? I would suggest to you three main reasons for it;
i] The Spirit came to bear witness to the glorious exaltation of the Lord Jesus Christ. Pentecost is a seal of God’s delight in his holy Son. It is a proof of God’s pleasure in everything that Jesus of Nazareth did. It is a declaration to the world that God has accepted the finished work of Christ; redemption has been accomplished and now is beginning its cosmic application. It is the evidence that Jesus Christ has received from his Father joint authority to bestow the Holy Spirit on the church. The name of Jesus of Nazareth had been cursed in Jerusalem. He had been despised, rejected and crucified. The Jews and Romans had stood together and condemned him. His disciples had all forsaken him and fled. His family had no understanding of who he was and what he was doing. Then God does not say to Peter, “Speak up and say a good word for my Son.” He does not send the angels forth to restore Christ’s reputation. God himself comes; God the Holy Spirit appears in Jerusalem where they murdered his Son in shame. There he terrifies the people and cuts them to their hearts for what they’ve done. There they cry, “Men and brethren what shall we do?” They are facing an open-ended encounter with the God whose Son they nailed to a cross. But there he saves three thousand Jerusalem sinners. That is how he vindicates his Son’s name. They all fall before Jesus Christ confessing him as their Saviour and God. God is bearing witness to the glorious exaltation of our Lord.
ii] The Spirit came to take Christ’s place. He is the other promised Paraclete and he has come, just as Christ said he would, but the Spirit would not stay with the disciples for three years and then have to leave them. He will stay with them and be in them for ever. Christ has ascended but God has sent onto the field of battle the great Substitute. God has taken his Son to glory and has sent in his place the Spirit, the one equal to him in power and majesty. When the man Christ Jesus was on earth he was confined to one place and to one time. If he were in Galilee he would not be in Jerusalem. If he were on the lake he could not be in the Temple, but the Holy Spirit has none of the confines of a body and so is equally everywhere resident with each believer, helping every preacher and at the heart of every gospel congregation.
The Lord Jesus once said wistfully in his state of humiliation, “I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! But I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is completed!” (Lk. 12:49&50). In the Acts after Pentecost we read of the gospel spreading through the world like a forest fire leaping from one place to another. Our Lord through his life had gathered together a people for himself. He had prepared them; he had laid the kindling; when the risen Christ opened Scripture to those on the road to Emmaus their hearts were soon burning within them. Everything was ready for the fire to fall from heaven, fanned by the wind and spoken in the languages of the people and then fire would spread throughout the earth. Jesus was longing for the fire to fall, distressed until his work of preparation was finished. Pentecost is the completion of the work of Christ. The Holy Spirit is the fire and wind descending on the apostles; the fire has come to earth. No longer is Jesus distressed as he sends forth his Spirit on Jerusalem and to the ends of the earth.
iii] The Spirit came to endue Christ’s servants. “Stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high” (Lk 24:49). Then at Pentecost the Spirit came and filled all of them. He blessed them with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus. They received the fruit of the Spirit to live Christ-like lives. They received him in a measure that was adequate for every possible exigency that they would meet in the Christian life. There would be no problem, no suffering, no temptation, nothing that could possibly overtake them from which there would not be adequate provision made in the transformation God had wrought in their lives by his Spirit. What glory and what privileges God endued them with.
So in moments of trial they could never turn around and blame the Lord for their failures. They couldn’t say, “You didn’t give us adequate resources,” because he would say to them, “Didn’t you receive the Holy Spirit? Weren’t you filled with the Spirit? Weren’t you blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places?” Jesus once said to them, “Take no heed of what you shall speak.” In other words, “Don’t torment yourself with sleepless anxiety when you are thrown out of synagogues, or when you appear before magistrates and they threaten your lives. The Spirit will fill you for service again and again.” They were filled in Acts chapter two and then they were filled again in Acts chapter four – the same people. God has helped you all in the past; he will never stop helping you.
“Yes,” you say, “but that is only the experience of the favoured special Christian – the hyper Christian, not an ordinary limping, struggling Christian like me.” No. We are told here that “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit” (v.4). It was a privilege pertaining to the whole company. What was it, this group of people who all came together on the day of Pentecost, who were all together in one place? Were they simply a crowd, a religious group of kindred spirits, a particular denominational gathering belonging to the Christian church? No, they were the entire Christian church, the total numerical strength as it was at this particular moment, and it was gathered with one accord there. They numbered one hundred and twenty people, and that is the seed out of which the whole Christian church grew. We were all back there in seed form. When our Lord poured out his Spirit then every single member of the body of Christ received the Spirit. That was the consequence of Pentecost. That is the privilege of the mere Christian. If anyone has not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his. The Spirit came in order to bear witness to the exaltation of Christ, to take Christ’s place, and to endue every one of Christ’s servants.
10th August 2008 GEOFF THOMAS