"Why, Soitenly!"

[Note: Found out from my doctor today that I've had pneumonia, but I'm on the back side of it. He wants another chest xray in 2-3 months, so that doesn't sound critical. It does explain why I could not rid myself of that constant coughing by self-medicating with a variety of donuts!  --Greg] 

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 (Acts 2:1 – 4 The Message).

The people are celebrating, as the law required … remembering the giving of the law … waving before God their loaves of bread made with fine flour, oil, and leaven … anticipating the new law to be ushered in by the coming of Messiah. They’d done this for centuries and I’m sure by now it was probably more ritual than any real anticipation of anything out of the ordinary happening. That’s just human nature.

Suddenly something incredible happens! Pentecost … it literally happens! There is a sound which Luke, being a southerner, can only describe as that of a tornado. Many years later, it would have been described like a locomotive rushing toward a mobile home park, but for now it is a tornadic / rushing wind. There are also these strange tongues of fire from heaven and people are speaking and understanding languages they’d never learned. I’m not sure just how that looked, but the flannel graph pictures we saw in Sunday School showed little flames sort of dancing on people’s heads. That, alone, would be enough to get my attention! And, Luke tells us, it all happened about 9a.m. (v.15) … .the same time the people were lifting in worship to God the loaves of leavened bread.

They’d been celebrating this event for generations and their only logical explanation … they are obviously drunk! Now that’s spiritual discernment for you, isn’t it? We’ve never been very accurate in describing the things of God. But how do you explain something like this? We have to place it in a frame of reference that we understand. Something to which we can relate. They were far more familiar with drunkedness than divinity.

I can almost accept that God’s Spirit indwells me. But you?! You can hardly believe the Spirit indwells you, but me?! Or that person at church you like the least and have to force yourself to love? That preacher that drives you crazy with his non-traditional ways? Or his insitence of holding fast to the traditions and orthodoxy. Those elders that allow all this progressivism … or deny any progression. No way!

Which reminds us that unity can only be achieved when our focus is on Jesus and not on each other. Because Jesus accepts imperfection in you and me (grace and justification), we have no option but to accept it in one another.

The beauty of Pentecost is that perfect God would come to live in imperfect people and work from within to bring us into a relationship of covenant fellowship. It’s not based on who we are or what we’ve done or anything we might possibly offer. Rather, it’s based entirely on who God is and what he’s done and is doing for us, in us, and through us. Christ in us.

Interestingly, when the first law was given, three thousand people died at Sinai. When the new law is given, three thousand people are saved! When man attempted to reach God by man’s effort (Babel), God stopped it through the confusion of language. When God came to dwell with man on His terms (Pentecost), he accomplished it through a common language!

Chuck Swindoll once wrote: "There are realms of earthly experience we’ve never traveled … depths of God’s love we’ve never tapped … and dimensions of the Holy Spirit we’ve never touched." Pentecost is the beginning of that dimension of the Holy Spirit we’ve nevver quite been able to grasp. But there are some implications for us.

One, we see one another through grace and accept one another just as God has accepted us through grace. Wherever I encounger a person whose Father is God, I have a brother or a sister. Unity is not based on uniformity. We are brothers and sisters in Christ. Nowhere does it say we must be identical twins. In spite of our history as those who have it figured out, we don’t! Nor do those we want to deny are our spiritual siblings. The only ones who are saved, are being saved, and will be saved are those who are saved by grace.

Two, we are given law so that we might know sin. I can never realize
nor comprehend my condition until I come face to face with law. It
doesn’t make me sinful, it just shows me as I am. Law declares me
guilty and helpless. There is absolutely nothing I can, in and of
myself, do to change the fact that I am guilty of sin and deserving of
death. But that’s all the law can do. It has no power whatsoever to
change me. Nor was that ever the intent of law. That is why a religion
of rules and regulations is powerless to change me into the image of
Christ. The beauty of Pentecost and the indwelling Spirit of God in our
lives is that we are declared holy and righteous by God and God’s law
is now guiding me from within and giving me life. Abundantly!

Three, we see the law of God as something that gives freedom to live! God’s law is not a straightjacket that restricts and restrains us from the joy of life. I grew up in Sheffield, Alabama, where the Tennessee River makes a bend through the northwestern corner of the state, where Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee converge. Along the Sheffield side of the river are high, dangerous bluffs. Trecherous bluffs. And signs warning people to stay off of the bluffs. We never paid attention to the signs, considering them an obstacle to our freedom to roam about the bluffs. I remember walking around a very, very narrow trail along the side of the bluff, probably 300′ over the river, with my cousin and two uncles when I slipped and would have fallen to my death had not my uncle grabbed me and held me until I could regain my footing. Those signs (that we ignored) were not posted to restrict our freedom … the were posted to give us life! Such is the law of God. Every aspect of his law is an expression of his love and of himself.

Pentecost is the marvelous celebration of divinity residing in humanity. God in man. The Holy Spirit in me! 

Next: Feast of Trumpets . . .