Significance of the Holy Spirit

There was a strong urge in my spirit to speak about the Holy Spirit, so the passage before us today is Acts chapter 1 verse 8, together with Acts chapter 2 verses 1 to 4. Let me read it. In Acts 1:8 Jesus says, "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." Then in chapter 2 verses 1 to 4: "When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them."

In Acts 11:26 we read that the disciples were first called Christians. The world, however, also calls us Pentecostals. We are Christians, yes, but we are also Pentecostals, because when the world looks at us they see something that resembles what happened on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2. So this morning we are going to ask: what is the significance of the Holy Spirit coming on the day of Pentecost? And if the world calls us Pentecostals, there are certain things we must keep in mind regarding our lives and regarding God's purpose for us.

Notice that Luke writes, "When the day of Pentecost came." Of all the writers of the New Testament, Luke contributed the most — two volumes, more than even the Apostle Paul. In his Gospel he tells us he wrote a careful, systematic account after investigating everything. Luke is a doctor by profession; he does not write merely to fill a page. Everything in his Gospel and in its second volume, Acts, carries meaning. So we must ask: why was the Spirit poured out on the day of Pentecost — not before, not after? What is this Pentecost all about?

Pentecost is the Greek name of a Jewish festival, and in the Old Testament that festival is known by three names: the Feast of Weeks, the Feast of Firstfruits, and the Feast of Harvest. The Greek name, Pentecost, simply means "the fiftieth day" — the fiftieth day counted from Passover. On this day the people commemorated the firstfruits of the wheat harvest. Listen carefully to what they did: loaves made from the firstfruits of the wheat harvest were offered before the Lord. It was a joyful festival. They brought the firstfruits and offered them with glad hearts, in the expectation that God would grant them a full harvest. The firstfruits were offered in anticipation of the harvest still to come.

Pentecost was one of the great pilgrim festivals that drew people from everywhere to Jerusalem; the others were the Feast of Passover and the Day of Atonement. It marked the beginning of the wheat harvest and was celebrated with much rejoicing. The historical writings tell us that people gathered around the table with good food and enjoyed a joyful meal before the Lord, because they trusted God to give them a harvest. It was also an occasion for many offerings, which you can read about in Leviticus 23 and Numbers 28. I am building the background, because this was a very significant day. In Acts 2 verse 5 you see its significance: there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. Ordinarily the scattered Jews would not all be present, but this festival brought them together to praise God, offer sacrifice, and anticipate the harvest. Luke even gives an almost exaggerated note — Jews from every nation under heaven gathered in Jerusalem. And this was also a festival known for welcoming new members into the Jewish family.

I want us to see the significance of this. The Spirit is poured out on the Feast of Firstfruits, when the people gathered, ate together, offered before God, and anticipated the great harvest at hand. And Luke, a skillful narrator, weaves his accounts together so that there are things to see in Acts that a casual reading would miss. His Gospel is written to show the life and ministry of Jesus — what Jesus began to do. Acts, as Luke himself indicates, is about what Jesus continues to do through the church, in its first thirty years.

Now see the parallels Luke draws between the opening of his Gospel and the opening of Acts. In Luke 1:35 the Spirit overshadows Mary at the conception of Jesus — the Spirit coming upon one person, just as the Spirit is later poured out upon the hundred and twenty disciples at Pentecost, now in a new way upon all of them, not on one alone. In Luke 1:41 the Spirit fills Elizabeth, and the result is inspired speech; this is the very word "filled" that reappears in Acts 2:4 when all of them are filled with the Holy Spirit and speak in other tongues. In Luke 2:27 the Spirit directs an old man, Simeon; the same Spirit in Acts 2 leads the apostles. Mary received the Spirit, and the disciples received the Spirit; there was guidance in Simeon and guidance in the disciples; there was an infilling in Elizabeth that produced inspired speech, and an infilling at Pentecost that produced inspired speech.

There is one more parallel. In Luke 3:22, at a pivotal moment in the life of Jesus, the Holy Spirit descends on him in bodily form like a dove, and a voice comes from heaven: "You are my Son." That was, as it were, the Pentecost in the life of Jesus. When the Spirit came upon Jesus the people saw a dove; in Acts 2 they saw tongues of fire. When the Spirit came upon Jesus a voice came from heaven; in Acts 2 a sound came from heaven. We are not reading an entirely new story in Acts 2:1-4. The Gospel already showed people led by the Spirit, filled with the Spirit, overshadowed by the Spirit; it showed the Spirit resting on Jesus with a dove and a voice; and now the same Spirit rests on the people with tongues of fire. With that background, let me draw out three principles from Acts 2:1-4 — what the day of Pentecost meant to the disciples.

First, the day of Pentecost was a reminder that they serve a faithful God — a covenant-keeping God, a God who will not fail and cannot lie. Look how Luke shows this. After the Spirit comes upon the hundred and twenty, Peter and the others keep connecting this event to what was promised beforehand — in Acts 2:33, in Acts 2:39, in Acts 13:23, and in sermon after sermon. What happened in Acts 2:1-4 is the fulfillment of an earlier promise. In Luke 24:49 Jesus told the disciples not to leave, for they would be clothed with power from above; and in Acts 1:4, while eating with them, he commanded them not to leave Jerusalem but to wait for what the Father had promised. So when the Spirit descended at Pentecost, their first thought was: the One who promised is faithful; He is an unchanging God. People of the Spirit, hear this truth — our God does not fail; He keeps His promises. If you have come to this service on the verge of giving up, here is the first principle: this is the fulfillment of what God promised before.

And it is not just one or two verses. There are three major promises in the Bible concerning the pouring out of the Spirit. The first is, "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts." God said this long ago — in Jeremiah 31:33 and in Ezekiel 36:22-36. The people had the law in their hands but were unable to keep it, and the prophets kept calling out that a day was coming. It did not come after a hundred or two hundred years, but after many, many years. And there is a beautiful connection here: the giving of the law in Exodus 19 also happened on the fiftieth day after the Passover, at Mount Sinai, when God came down. In Exodus 19 the people saw the smoke and heard the sound of the wind — fire, wind, and sound, the very things you read of in Acts 2:1-4. That too happened on a fiftieth day after Passover. And here, fifty days after the resurrection of Jesus, is another fiftieth day. After teaching them about the kingdom, Jesus told them to wait in Jerusalem, and they waited; counting from Passover, fifty days. As the law was given through Moses, so now the Spirit is given — not to one person, not to the leader only, but poured out on all flesh.

Through the Spirit the law is written on our hearts, so that we are not believers merely keeping a set of rules and struggling. The old covenant life was full of rules you could not live up to, so that every Sunday you came carrying guilt — "I cannot do this, it is too much." But this is Pentecost: when the Spirit is poured into our hearts, He not only tells us what is right and wrong, He gives us power to overcome sin. In Romans 6:14 Paul writes that sin shall not be your master, and in Galatians 5:16 and 18 he writes that if you keep in step with the Spirit you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. This is the power of the Holy Spirit, and this is the people of Pentecost — the law written on our hearts, and a power working in us to lead us to righteousness.

The second promise is that God Himself would come and dwell with His people, a word that echoes in John 14:23, where Jesus says that to those who love and obey Him, "We will come to them and make our home with them." Look at the Garden of Eden — there is no temple there, because every day God came and walked with Adam and Eve. Later there came a need for an assigned space for God to come down: the tabernacle, and then Solomon's temple. In those places they saw the cloud and the fire — as in Exodus, and as at Mount Horeb in 1 Kings 19, where Elijah encountered the presence of God. Yet God's desire was never to live in buildings; He wanted to come and stay with His people. The hundred and twenty might have wondered how this could ever be — we are sinners, God is perfect; He dwelt in the temple, but will He come and live inside of me? On the day of Pentecost that promise is fulfilled: God comes to dwell inside of His people. Pentecost is therefore also a refining moment, for when the Spirit is poured into our hearts He leads us to holy living.

The third promise concerns the glory. In the Old Testament they had seen the glory leave the temple, and the prophet Ezekiel prophesied in chapter 43 verses 1 to 5 that God would return to the temple with His majesty and glory. But they did not see it. They kept waiting. When the second temple was constructed around 516 BC, they waited eagerly, yet it was not as glorious as the first, and they did not see the Shekinah glory return. But when Jesus came and walked on the face of the earth, people looked at Him and said, "We have seen the glory." In the Old Testament the glory was seen in only one place — the temple and the tabernacle; now it is seen in a Person. As John writes, "We have seen the glory." In Jesus you have a walking temple; God no longer dwells in buildings. And here is the lesson for the people of Pentecost: God promised He would return to the temple, and where did He return? When the Spirit comes into our lives, we become the temple of God, where our neighbors can see His glory manifested through our lives. God promised, "I will return"; God promised, "I will come and live with you"; God promised, "I will write my law on the heart" — and everything finds its fulfillment when the Spirit is poured out at Pentecost.

There is something more in Acts 2:2 — "Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven." The rushing of that violent wind is reminiscent of Ruah, that great Old Testament word which stands for the breath of God, the Spirit of God, the wind. The first time we see God's breath is in Genesis 2:7, where God breathed and man became a living being. Another high moment is in Ezekiel's valley of dry bones, where the wind, the breath of God, comes and the dead become alive. And that is exactly what is happening in Acts 2:1-4. Look at these hundred and twenty: there is no life in them. Their treasurer — where is he? Their treasurer hanged himself. These people had a bad reputation; who would join a church whose most important elder, Judas, committed suicide? Most of the rest were fishermen, not educated as the world prizes, weak and vulnerable; one of their spokesmen had denied Jesus three times. And as for their leader, the popular rumor was that His body had been stolen — that He did not rise or ascend, that it was all a story made up by the disciples.

Imagine the hundred and twenty staying together because God had promised to pour out His Spirit, looking at one another and thinking, "We don't think we can grow; we don't think we can go far." Two days pass, three days, nine days. Being Jews, they know the significance of Pentecost — in Exodus 19 the law was given, and it should be celebrated with good food, yet here they simply sit. But on this fiftieth day something happens: the Spirit is poured out upon them like a violent wind, and they know for certain that the One who promised to come is near. And when you have the Spirit, growth becomes natural. We do not need a strategy for how to grow; we need the power of the Holy Spirit. This hundred and twenty became three thousand, and the three thousand became five thousand — because God returned to His temple, and through these weak and vulnerable ones the kingdom of God expanded. This is a new creation: just as in Genesis 2:7 God breathed and man became a living being, so this hundred and twenty, who were as good as dead, were made alive by that wind — alive to go and be witnesses for Jesus.

The second lesson is that the day of Pentecost is an assurance of God's purpose for our lives. Until this moment the disciples sat as though they had no purpose — lost, some carrying guilt, some battered by the scorn of their neighbors. But when the Spirit came and the wind struck that room, there was a renewal of purpose. And here is where some of us have gone wrong. What is the purpose of the Spirit coming like wind and fire? Read Acts 2:4 carefully: "All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them." From this verse we developed the idea that the purpose of the Holy Spirit's coming is to make us speak in tongues. But that was not the promise. The promise in Acts 1:8 was, "You will receive power" — power for what? Not power merely to speak in tongues, but power to be His witnesses. The purpose of the Spirit coming is to make us witnesses; speaking in tongues is a sign that we have that power. Unfortunately many people can speak in tongues yet have no power to be witnesses, and that is how the devil takes our eyes off the important things. The power we receive is to witness — out there, in a broken world.

What does it mean to be a witness? Look at John 18:37, the very purpose of Jesus being born and coming into the world. He says, "You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth." Jesus came to bear witness to the truth; He Himself is the truth, and He came to draw people to Himself and through Himself to the Father. In John 15:27 there is one qualification for those who would be witnesses: "And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning." Look at that — you must witness because you have been with Me. And what is Acts 2:1-4? It is an experience in which we know we are with Jesus, and the result of that is power to witness. We use the word "witness" so often that it has almost lost its force, but it is a legal term: it means firsthand information about what you have seen or heard. That is all that is asked of a witness — to tell another person what he has seen or heard firsthand. So it was with Paul: in Acts 22:15, "You will be his witness to all people of what you have seen and heard"; and in Acts 26:16, "Now get up and stand on your feet. I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen and will see of me." You cannot be a witness if you have not seen and heard — if you have not experienced God.

So witnessing is not only preaching from the pulpit or expounding the Scriptures with three points. Witnessing is telling the person sitting next to you in the workplace; it is testifying to the students who are with you in class — telling them what you have seen and heard, what you have experienced. Have you experienced God? Without a Pentecost experience you may still carry the tag, "You are a Pentecostal," yet have no experience — and then you can never truly be a witness, because witnessing is all about what you have seen and heard. The hundred and twenty saw tongues of fire, they heard a loud sound, they experienced God; and the next step was power to witness. See what that power can do. Peter, the coward who after three years with Jesus denied Him before a single servant girl, saying, "I do not know Him," because it would invite trouble — after the infilling of the Holy Spirit, in Acts 2:14, stands up with the eleven, raises his voice, and tells the Jewish people that they crucified this Messiah. Some are uneasy about a raised voice, but note that when Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit she too raised her voice — it is all right to raise your voice in the house of the Lord.

Wait a minute, Peter — what happened to you? Before one woman you said you did not know Jesus, and now, after this infilling, you have power to witness boldly about the One with whom you spent three years. Jesus had called him Peter, Petros, a piece of rock, yet there were many struggles; at one point Jesus had to say to him, "Get behind me, Satan." Those low moments were real. Many of us can connect with Peter, because sometimes we go before Jesus and counsel Him, give Him our suggestions, and fail to trust. But this piece of rock, who failed the Lord several times, is rocking on the day of Pentecost — and the same Pentecost power is available to you and me. With all our disappointments and frustrations, if we experience God in a personal, unique way, we have power to witness. And the sign that we have that power is speaking in tongues. Jesus is on trial in many people's hearts; some think He is a divine man with miraculous power, but they do not know what to make of Him. He needs witnesses who can go and say, "You have confusion about Jesus; I have experienced Him firsthand — have you?" That is the qualification that makes you a witness in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Thirdly, Pentecost is an assurance of God's continued presence in our lives. He fulfills promises, He gives us purpose, and He assures us, "I will be with you." Look at Acts 2:3 — the tongues of fire came to rest on each one of them. This experience is individual. We can come to church and assume we are doing well because the worship is nice and the preaching is good, but this fire must be experienced personally. What does the fire stand for? If the wind, from Genesis 2:7, stands for the breath of God, the fire stands for the symbol of the divine presence. All through the Bible fire is the sign of God's presence — in Exodus 3:2 at the burning bush, in Deuteronomy 5:4 where God speaks out of the fire. First there was a sign of hearing, the violent sound; now there is a sign of sight, something visible to see.

In the Old Testament the Spirit came upon a few chosen individuals for a particular task and then withdrew. Bezalel was filled with the Spirit for a task, and afterward the Spirit was taken off. The prophets were filled with the Spirit for a task, and then it lifted. But this is a new way, and here is the assurance, people of God: twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, you can experience God in your life. In the very toughest moment, when you are all alone, when you have gone for that diagnosis and the doctor looks at you with the report and his face is grave, and you wonder whether you came for a checkup or to be admitted — when you receive that alarming report, remember that you are a man of Pentecost. The fire rests on you even in the valley of the shadow of death; this fire will not leave you. It is the sign that God is with you. He does not send us out alone. Did Jesus not say, "I will be with you to the end of the age"? From Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the ends of the earth, this fire remains. Without the fire there is no Pentecost; without the real presence of God there is no Pentecost. You may carry the tag, "I am a Pentecostal," but you need the fire of God — the presence of God in your life in a personal way.

Why did they need this fire to rest on them? Because what was coming was unexpected. They did not know how long the task of witnessing would take; they thought Jesus would return in a few years and take them home, but the task is still continuing after two thousand years. They knew very little of how tough witnessing could become. In Acts 8 they meet Simon the sorcerer; in Acts 16 a slave girl with a spirit of divination; in Acts 19 at Ephesus the goddess Artemis and her whole city set against the work of God. Yet because these people had tongues of fire, the presence of God, they overcame Simon the sorcerer, the slave girl, and the goddess of Artemis, and kept moving forward. Toward the end, in Acts, Paul is bitten by a viper, but the fire is upon him and he simply shakes it off. God is calling some of us to do the same — the difficulty that you feel now, that seems as if it will kill you, you can shake off by the power of the Holy Spirit. That is Pentecost: shake it off, shed it off, because you have a race to run.

And it was not only sorcerers and magicians. They little knew that in Acts 7 this witnessing community would lose one of its young, vibrant preachers, Stephen, stoned to death. None of them foresaw it. In Acts 12 James is killed. Without the fire, the immediate reaction would be, "Don't go to that place; let's go somewhere else; let's stay back and pray." The church prayed, and Peter came out of prison. It was not that the church failed to pray for James — I believe the church prayed, but God's will was that he should be a martyr. James was killed, Peter was released, and the church moved forward and forward in the midst of persecution, in the midst of all the witchcraft and opposing powers, because of the tongues of fire that represent the Holy Spirit's presence.

As I bring this sermon to the cross, let me ask you this question: are you a true Pentecostal? Pentecost is all about experiencing God, and in that experience you receive three things. First, you know for certain what God has promised, and that it will surely come to pass — because it was not a man who promised you, it was the message of God. Second, you receive a new purpose in life; whatever has happened to you is not the end of the story. Peter had a new beginning, and it is all about new beginnings. And third, you receive the power of Pentecost, which is experiencing God twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week — the fire resting upon you, making you a witness to the ends of the earth.