GUESTBOOK

The Fifth Pentecost

Acts 2: 1 – 23

Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 30 May, 2004

IN the past weeks, as we have built up towards Pentecost — which is today, we have investigated some of the range of Old Testament and New Testament teaching on the Spirit.

  Today, we come to the most crucial aspect — Pentecost itself, the celebration of that day when the Holy Spirit came on the church in such a dramatic and life–changing way to launch Christianity decisively on the world.
  But there are, in fact, four Pentecostal events, even if there was only one Pentecost.
  God didn’t plan to limit the impulse that launched his greatest project to a few Jews. He wanted it to spread into the entire world.
  So today we look at the Jewish Pentecost, the Samaritan Pentecost, the Gentile Pentecost and the Mandaean Pentecost. And there is one more. Five different Pentecosts.

We need to understand Pentecost. When Israel came out of Egypt, God gave them this commandment (Ex 34: 22):

22"Celebrate the Feast of Weeks with the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, and the Feast of Ingathering at the turn of the year. 23Three times a year all your men are to appear before the Sovereign LORD, the God of Israel. 24I will drive out nations before you and enlarge your territory, and no one will covet your land when you go up three times each year to appear before the LORD your God.

  Devout Jews annually celebrated the great, joyous harvest feast. They call it, Shavuot. It is a festival of joy, of wine and honey, of enlarged territory, ot defeated enemies.
  It is time of God’s favour, as Jesus preached at Nazareth, that the Spirit of the Lord had anointed him to proclaim the year of God’s favour.
  But that same Pentecostal blessing spread out from those Jews as they waited together in the upper room in Jerusalem.
  We read the story moments ago.

21When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.

The heavenly fire was distributed. And it went on being distributed, and still is today. Like the fire fed by the two olive trees in Zechariah’s prophecy, Spirit’s flame never goes out, but spreads more and more widely.
So let’s look at these four Pentecosts.

PENTECOST IN JERUSALEM
We already know about the outbreak of the Holy Spirit in Jerusalem. We know the disciples were still hiding in their upper room for fear of the Jews as they had been doing for seven weeks since Jesus died and rose again.
Are they like us? Do we hide in our attics for fear of the world? For too long, Christians have been silent and let evil flourish.

Today, many people believe that the Crusades and the Inquisition represented Christianity. Some semi-serious scholars say Hitler was a Christian leader!

People talk about John Howard’s and Alexander Downer’s Anglicanism or of Philip Ruddock’s Uniting Church connexions, or of Tony Abbott’s Catholicism and Peter Costello’s Baptist upbringing. Then they talk about refugee children held in captivity and say, “This policy of imprisoning children is a Christian policy!”
Don’t say social action is worldly. Don’t think, “Get people converted: the rest will fall into place.”

When converted people speak up for truth, when Christian people speak for peace, for justice, for redemption, the world hears.

Something happened to transform these scared, inward–looking people into bold, outward–looking, unstoppable believers.

Just like the boldness Jesus had when he confronted the Jewish leaders and the Roman bureaucrats, these Christians healed in public in the name of Jesus, they accused crowds of being Christ–killers, they drove demons out of fortune tellers and robbed idol–makers of their trade by preaching against idolatry.
They had Holy Spirit power, they were unstoppable, and they transformed society.

By 300AD, no one could ignore Christianity. It was really all around. By 320AD it was the official religion of the Roman Empire.

And, all the while, the Lord added daily to their number those who were being saved.
When the Spirit came in power, at last the church had the impetus and the anointing to minister in the name of Jesus.

PENTECOST IN SAMARIA
The next place we see an outbreak of Holy Spirit power is in Samaria.

  Samaritans were to Jews as Jehovahs Witnesses are to Christians. Samaria was the capital of Israel, the Northern Kingdom of the Israelites. In 722BC, Israel was invaded and conquered by the Assyrians. Whole cities were deported. A few rural Israelites were left behind and new populations were moved in.
  The newcomers went on with the worship practices they had brought with them from Babylon and other places, so God sent a plague of lions on them.
  The Assyrian king sent one of the captured Israelite priests back to teach the new settlers how to worship God properly, so that God would not punish them. But the Samaritans had a mixed worship despite that priests efforts. They worshipped Yahweh, the Lord, in Samaria itself, and worshipped their old gods in shrines and high places outside the cities.
  They Jews criticised them, but never helped them. So, even in Jesus’ time, the Samaritans were considered religiously suspect, unclean and dangerous to know. They were considered half–Jews — not the real thing.

But Philip went to Samaria, and we read about it in Acts 8.

4Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went. 5Philip went down to a city in Samaria and proclaimed the Christ there. 6When the crowds heard Philip and saw the miraculous signs he did, they all paid close attention to what he said. 7With shrieks, evil spirits came out of many, and many paralytics and cripples were healed.
...when they believed Philip as he preached the good news of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptised, both men and women...
14When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them. 15When they arrived, they prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit, 16because the Holy Spirit had not yet come upon any of them; they had simply been baptised into the name of the Lord Jesus. 17Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.

If the day of Pentecost marked the ingathering and the anointing of Jewish believers, the Samaritan Pentecost marks the full acceptance and anointing ot the Samaritans. And it happened when Peter and John were there, so that there were apostolic witnesses who could confirm to the whole church that God had continued his work among the Samaritans. It was incredible for the Jews, but, if God had chosen to do it, they would not stand in God way.

If we did as these early Christians did, and recognised God’s work rather than set up rules for God to follow, most of the issues of ministry which plague churches today would disappear. One day, God will break down all those petty rules and grind them into the dust.

The Holy Spirit began an ingathering move among the Samaritans.

GENTILE PENTECOST
Our third area is the Gentile Pentecost. We read about it in Acts 10. A Roman Centurion named Cornelius believed in God and supported his local synagogue, but had not converted to Judaism. Many men were sensitive about the idea of conversion.

  One day, as Cornelius was praying, he saw an angel in a vision, and the angel told him to look for Peter, and where to find him.
  A couple of days later, as Peter was praying, he also had a vision, effectively telling him to accept anyone and anything that God sent to him. That was a radical thought for a Jew who was used to thinking of everything as clean or unclean, touchable or untouchable.
  Minutes later, Cornelius’ servants arrived and knocked on the door. And Peter went with them, even going right inside Cornelius’ house.
  We read that Peter asked Cornelius why he had sent for him, and Cornelius explained how he had had the vision from God to send for Peter. The story continues —

34Then Peter began to speak: “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism 35but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right. 36You know the message God sent to the people of Israel, telling the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all. 37You know what has happened throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached— 38how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him.

39"We are witnesses of everything he did in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They killed him by hanging him on a tree, 40but God raised him from the dead on the third day and caused him to be seen. 41He was not seen by all the people, but by witnesses whom God had already chosen—by us who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. 42He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one whom God appointed as judge of the living and the dead. 43All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”

44While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message. 45The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles. 46For they heard them speaking in tongues and praising God.
Then Peter said, 47"Can anyone keep these people from being baptised with water? They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have.” 48So he ordered that they be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked Peter to stay with them for a few days.1

Once again, the gospel took hold far beyond little Jewish Jerusalem. God wants his message to spread everywhere!

MANDAEAN PENTECOST
The fourth group are Mandaeans. The Bible doesn’t call them Mandaeans, but that’s what we call them today — the followers of John the Baptiser. Many of them have been in the Australian Refugee detention centres. They come here to avoid persecution and prison in Iran and similar places. Many have been beaten and abused in the detention centres by Muslim detainees.

Paul found some Mandaeans in Ephesus, as we read in Acts 19.

191While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul took the road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus. There he found some disciples 2and asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?”
They answered, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”
3So Paul asked, “Then what baptism did you receive?”
“John’s baptism,” they replied.
4Paul said, “John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. He told the people to believe in the one coming after him, that is, in Jesus.” 5On hearing this, they were baptised into the name of the Lord Jesus. 6When Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied. 7There were about twelve men in all.

These were "mainstream" Jews, but they were not identified with the Pharisees or the Sadducees, or any of the other main groups in Jewish society. In many ways they were the outcasts from within the society. It was the way Anglicans used to look down on Baptists and Pentecostals — we were disreputable, and didn’t do things decently and respectably.

When I was at school I had a teacher who sometimes wanted to talk about "way-out" sects, and his name for them was "bush Baptists." That was where I got the idea for the Bush Baptists cartoon in The Australian Baptist.
That attitude was what people had about followers of John.

They were devout people, but what they really didn’t have was Jesus as their Saviour and the Holy Spirit as their indwelling strengthener and their anointing for service.
Once again, their initiation into Christian life and service is attended by evidence of the coming of the Holy Spirit upon them: they spoke in tongues and prophesied.

THE FIFTH PENTECOST
My message today is a simple one. Pentecost is for you and me, too.

  In one sense, Pentecost is past. What happened in Jerusalem is the basic Pentecost, and what happened in Samaria and in Joppa and in Ephesus was just a finalisation of that initiation into the Holy Spirit that began among the Jerusalem Jewish believers.
  So, we are included in the Gentile Pentecost. But we need to enter into what is already achieved for us.
  God has built a Pentecostal place for you and me, and we come into it, we come under that anointing of the Spirit by faith.

It’s like the image in Psalm 133 of the anointing oil pouring over Aaron’s head and down over the body below. God’s Holy Spirit anointing on Jesus pours down on his body, the church. When we live close to Christ by repentant faith and close to each other in true unity, then the Spirit pours down over us all and anoints us all, and brings us all into the Pentecost experience, so that we can say, as Paul puts it in I Corinthians,

By one Spirit we have all been baptised into one body and all been made to drink of that one Spirit.

On this Pentecost Sunday, let’s confess our failures of faith and love and return to the Lord who loves us and wants to anoint us to serve him and to serve the world for which he died.

May he bless us all as we do,

AMEN

© Peter R. Green 2004. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. Portions also copyright The Bible, NIV (Zondervan Ltd.