Pentecost: The Church's Birthday and Call to Serve

Peter explains to them about the person of Jesus Christ, how he came to earth, God worked through him, he created all kinds of wonders and signs that these very people, many of them, saw for themselves. Peter told them, you killed him, but death could not hold him. We are witnesses to this, and he has ascended and seated at the right hand of God. When the people heard Peter, it says, they were cut to the quick and asked what can we do? Peter said, believe and be baptized. And 3,000 people were added to their number that day. Happy birthday, church. [00:39:16] (48 seconds)  #BirthOfTheChurch

Even in this story of the Jewish history, God's gift of the Holy Spirit was limited. So, okay, maybe that's more than one person, but this was only temporary for a specific work. All the people receiving the spirit at one time would have been a very different story from the history that these devout Jews would have remembered. All the people never received the spirit of God until today. When Peter, full of the holy spirit himself, stood up and said to them, listen to me. This is exactly what the prophet Joel told us would happen. [00:38:06] (51 seconds)  #JoelProphecyFulfilled

Pentecost was and is the completion of the the Easter promise, a new covenant, a new law, the law of love. Not a law written on tablets of stone, but a law written with the spirit on hearts of flesh. On that day, the people didn't believe Peter because of the wind or the sound or the fire. Although that would have been a clear sign that something was definitely up in my opinion. Just like you, Raven, I'd like to see that fire on my head. Mhmm. They believed because they just saw this regular guy, a fisherman, uneducated, but full of the holy spirit standing up to tell them the story of Jesus. And now it was coming true right before their very eyes. [00:40:59] (70 seconds)  #LawWrittenOnHearts

So how does a Jewish holiday become a big Lutheran one? When ordinary people like you and me and Peter are selected, chosen by God for extraordinary work in the kingdom of God in Jesus name. Just like the prophet Joel told them what happened, the young and the old, women and men, slaves and free. On this day, we commemorate and the Jews first witnessed the fire and the wind was kind of a recreating of the events of their history. History. It was as if God had a new message for them. A new revelation was coming. A new covenant. [00:40:04] (55 seconds)  #OrdinaryToExtraordinary

And so God directed Samuel and he anointed Saul's head with oil and scripture tells us the spirit of God came powerfully upon Saul and he was a changed person. And for a time, Saul ruled God's faithful people faithfully until, well, he didn't. So God raised up another. Right? King David. And Samuel anointed David's head with oil, and scripture tells us on that day, the spirit of the lord came powerfully upon David and the spirit of lord departed from Saul. So in the ancient stories of their history like these, it was as if there was only enough holy spirit for one person at a time temporarily received for a specific purpose, and that's it. [00:36:21] (57 seconds)  #SpiritWasOneAtATime

So these devout Jews adhering this violent wind and seeing the tongues of fire, they would have remembered their ancestors first encounter with God in the desert, and that marked the establishment of the mosaic covenant with God through the law and Moses. But on this day in Jerusalem, there was something about this encounter that was a little different. Our story says that all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to to speak in other tongues as the spirit enabled them. Well, this didn't exactly line up with Jewish history at all. [00:34:50] (48 seconds)  #TonguesAndFireForAll

And so these god fearing Jews from every nation who were staying in Jerusalem at the time, they would have remembered from the ancient stories that their parents told them and their grandparents told them of when Moses brought the people to meet God in camp for the first time. They would remember that scripture says that there was thunder and lightning and a heavy cloud over the mountain and a very loud ram's horn was making a loud noise. Mount Sinai was completely enveloped in smoke because the Lord had come down in fire upon it, and the whole mountain shook violently. [00:34:02] (48 seconds)  #SinaiFireAndSmoke

Or maybe they remembered centuries before David and Saul during the time of Moses when they were in the desert and Moses was arguing with God about how much the all of these 600,000 Israelites were frankly just kinda getting on his nerves. And so God responded and said, I will bring you some help. Bring me 70 of Israel's elders who are known to you as leaders of the people. I will take some of the power of the spirit that is on you, and I will put it on each of them to share the burden of the people so that you do not have to carry it alone. [00:37:24] (42 seconds)  #SharedSpiritAndLeadership