Looking Back Twice to See Acts 2

Pentecost reveals how God fulfilled Israel’s ancient harvest feast and reversed the curse of Babel by gathering sinners from every nation through the proclamation of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit.

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Looking Back Twice to See Acts 2

Good Morning. Today we come to the end of the Easter season with the great Feast of Pentecost, also known as Whitsunday. Pentecost is one of the main celebrations of the Church year, but what many people do not realize is that it was already an old and beloved feast day long before the coming of Jesus.

You may have noticed that this week your Jewish neighbors were celebrating Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks, which ended last night. I had the chance to talk with our neighbor Judy across the street about it, since she needed a ride to shul the last few days. Along the way she even got a little lesson about how Christians still celebrate this same feast, now through the lens of the Cross.

What’s neat is our church calendar didn’t appear out of thin air. God was already telling the story of Jesus long before Bethlehem, long before Calvary, long before the Upper Room. The Old Testament feasts of Israel were given as signposts pointing to show us what the Messiah’s mission would look like.

To see the real power of what happened in Acts 2, we have to look back twice, and not just a little way. First, we look back to Biblical roots of Israel’s harvest festivals in the book of Leviticus.

Pentecost was to be celebrated 50 days after the firstfruits, the earliest produce was harvested. The first crops spring up out of the ground, you count fifty days, then comes the harvest celebration. Later, they just started counting the first fruits day on Passover.

In Jesus day, Jewish pilgrims from all over the world came to worship at the Temple, bringing a symbolic portion of their crops as an offering before the Lord.

That’s why, when Acts 2 begins, we find worshipers from all over the world in Jerusalem: Parthians, Medes, etc. But after the resurrection, Pentecost becomes filled with a deeper spiritual meaning, centered on Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

Fifty days earlier, on Easter morning, Jesus rose from the dead as the firstfruits of the resurrection. The grave could not hold Him. Death could not keep Him down. Then, fifty days later, on the feast celebrating firstfruits, God pours out the Holy Spirit in the Temple in Jerusalem.

And when you continue this story, you see that, after Peter preached how Christ fulfilled all the Old Testament said about Him, 3000 souls were baptized and added to the Church that day. The agricultural harvest festival now becomes a spiritual harvest festival for us of sinners being brought into salvation and guided by the Holy Spirit in His church.

So that is one picture of Pentecost. But as I said, there are two pictures here, one even older, and much less talked about. To really understand Pentecost, you have to go way back to Genesis 11 and the story of the Tower of Babel.

After the flood, Noah’s descendants were told to move out and subdue the earth, but they didn’t want to. Genesis 11 records they said:

Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves.

They wanted to build a tower so tall that their name would be carved into the clouds, forever remembered. They wanted to be the ones in control and have God at their bidding. Nothing new or old here.

People spend their whole lives trying to build their own little towers of success, trying to make sure their name, not God’s, is the one people remember.

Sinful humanity is always trying to climb upward. Babel shows us where that road ends. God comes down. Here He confuses their language, and scatters the nations. What looked like human greatness collapses into confusion.

Now turn your eyes to the scene in the Upper room from Acts, when God comes down again. The apostles were gathered, focused on how to Glorify God, and fulfill Christ’s commission, when suddenly there comes the sound of a mighty rushing wind. Tongues as of fire rest upon them. They begin speaking in other languages, and the crowd is stunned.

Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language?

What’s wonderful is that this miracle is not centered merely on human unity. The crowd says, “We hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.” That is the center of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit comes so that Christ may be proclaimed.

At the Tower, language became a barrier because of human pride. At the Temple, language becomes a vessel for the Gospel. The Holy Spirit reverses Babel by gathering people together through the preaching of the Gospel.

At Babel, people united around human ambition. Here, people are united around Jesus Christ. The Church is not held together by ethnicity, nationality, or culture. The Church is held together by Christ crucified and risen for sinners. That is why the Gospel can cross every human boundary.

At Babel, mankind tries to climb the stairway to heaven. At Pentecost, God comes down. That is the difference between every human religion and the Gospel. Human religion says, “Work harder. Climb higher. Make yourself worthy.”

But Christianity begins with God descending to sinners. The Son of God comes down into our flesh, our suffering, and our death. And then the Holy Spirit comes down upon the Church, because Jesus Christ opened heaven through His death and resurrection and ascension.

That is why the disciples are not relying on themselves on the day of Pentecost. They are mostly ordinary fishermen. A few weeks earlier they had been hiding behind locked doors in fear. Jesus tells them to carry the Gospel to the ends of the earth. They know they have no ability of their own to do that!

So they wait as Jesus said, and they pray. They depend entirely upon God.

And when the Holy Spirit comes, Peter, who once crumbled in fear before a servant girl, now stands in that same city preaching Christ before thousands.

He is no longer relying on his own courage. He is relying on the God who came down to meet him in his failure.

The kingdom of God has never rested on human strength. The Church still grows the same way it grew at Pentecost, through the Holy Spirit working through the proclamation of Christ.

That means our hope is not in ourselves. It is not in our strength, our programs, our talents, or our ability to hold everything together. Our hope is in the God who comes down to sinners.

And that same Jesus who poured out His Spirit upon the Church 2000 years ago will supply us today what we need, even when we think, I can’t do it, or I have no ability. Because it never was us, it is always Him. Thanks be to God. Amen.