The Day of Pentecost
Download MP3If you would open your Bibles to Acts chapter 2. We are working our way through the book of Acts. We'll begin chapter 2. And I know it says verses 1 through 13, you will not be so lucky. We we might get through verse 4.
Jeffrey Heine:We'll have to look at things like tongues and things like that next week. We'll we'll we'll see how far we get, but we'll read the first 13 verses. When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly, there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind. And it filled the entire house where they were sitting.
Jeffrey Heine:And divided tongues as a fire appeared to them and rested, and each one of on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. Now they were dwelling in Jerusalem, Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound, the multitude came together and they were bewildered because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. And they were amazed and astonished saying, are not all these who are speaking Galileans?
Jeffrey Heine:And how is it that we hear each of us in our own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia and Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytites, Cretans and Arabians. We hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God. And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, what does this mean? But others mocking said they are filled with new wine.
Jeffrey Heine:Pray with me. Lord Jesus, we ask that you would come be present through your spirit. That even through the very reading of your word, you would honor it and bless it and begin speaking truth deep into our hearts. Now I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore, Lord. But may your words remain, and may they transform us.
Jeffrey Heine:And we pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. About 13 years ago, Lauren and I were asleep, in bed in our apartment, when the phone rang. And it startled us. It got us out of bed, and no one ever called me at this time.
Jeffrey Heine:I had not started college ministry yet in which I was used to, those 12 o'clock or 1 o'clock phone calls for no other reason than wanting to play wiffle ball or or something like that. This is before that time and so I knew it had to be something serious, some kind of emergency. And, so I grabbed the phone and on the other line was a person who I hadn't talked to in many years. He was a friend of mine. We grew up together.
Jeffrey Heine:We went to the same church together. We even became college roommates during our freshman year. And then and then we could not have gone 2 more different paths at that point. He just he just kind of did the party scene a little bit and then his faith really got shaken and finally he ended up just completely abandoning his faith. Completely.
Jeffrey Heine:The last that I had heard about him, and because I hadn't talked to him in a long time, was that he was in graduate school. He was living with his girlfriend, and, and he still, was not just not part of a church. He'd completely given up on his faith. And yet, here he is after midnight on the phone with me. I'm not even sure how he got my number, but he he was really excited.
Jeffrey Heine:I mean, really excited. And I was like, what's going on? And he goes, do you realize God is real? I mean, he's real. I'm like, yeah.
Jeffrey Heine:I mean, I realize I got no. No. No. I mean, do you realize? I mean, he is he is real Joel.
Jeffrey Heine:I'm talking he is real real. He's not just somebody that we read about, on pages. He's not just some kind of ancient history. God is real. He's living.
Jeffrey Heine:He's present. He's working. God is real, and he's he's just going on and on. I'm like, well calm down. Calm down.
Jeffrey Heine:Tell me what what happened? So, well, my girlfriend and I, we were we were coming home from grocery shopping. They hadn't been to church in forever. Haven't even thought about those things. And and they they get into their kitchen, and she falls to the floor, and she begins speaking in tongues for over an hour.
Jeffrey Heine:It's like, okay. That's that's unusual. That's, that doesn't happen very often. Then then then then what happened? What what do you do?
Jeffrey Heine:He goes, well, I was freaked out. I didn't know what to do. I'm just looking at her. But then when she finished, I began interpreting and said, I quoted entire books of the Bible for over an hour. Like, okay.
Jeffrey Heine:That's also really unusual. I was like, then then what did he do? He goes, then I called you. It's like, and God's real. He's real, and he just kept saying, he is so real.
Jeffrey Heine:God used that strange extraordinary event in their life to completely change them. Kind of give them a slap on those. Wake them up to reality. He ended up finishing his degree. They're now serving the Lord in Uganda.
Jeffrey Heine:He and his family, passionately serving the Lord there. And I'm sure he's listening to this because he listens to the podcast each week. The reason I I share this story with you, this unusual story, is because that's a mini version of what you see here in Acts chapter 2. It's just kind of this micro version of what you're seeing here in which God suddenly just shows up in an extraordinary way, does whatever he wants. There's tongues.
Jeffrey Heine:There's these these signs, and this through this miraculous incredible experience, lives are completely changed. They're transformed. All of a sudden, god becomes very real to these people. Very real. In a way that he hadn't to before And to these disciples, God had become real to them in a way that they didn't find in just reading their Hebrew scriptures before.
Jeffrey Heine:And yes, they knew Jesus. Yes, they believed in Jesus. They knew him to be the son of God, but Jesus had ascended, and Jesus was gone. But now in a very real way, he was present with them again. So God was real to them.
Jeffrey Heine:And when this realness hit them, they had the same experience as my friend had. You just had to share. You just, you know, you could not. I mean, it's not like they were gonna go to sleep then. You had to start calling people and sharing what had happened.
Jeffrey Heine:Now I believe that God can still do this. Absolutely. He can do this. But what we see here in Acts, here at Pentecost, I don't believe is a normative experience for the Christian. I bet if I were to take a poll here and just say, okay, how many of you have experienced, you know, flaming fire coming down tongues, rushing wind?
Jeffrey Heine:I bet that, you know, maybe none of you. Maybe there's a few out there, but, you know, this is not a normative Christian experience. What we see here is extraordinary. Even the book of Acts is gonna call this extraordinary, We see here the ushering in of a new age, the ushering in of the new covenant. And this is when the church, and it's often been described, is is lifted up out of infancy into adulthood right here.
Jeffrey Heine:Today is actually Ascension Sunday, which has a lot to do with this passage. Because we are seeing at Pentecost the outcome of the ascension. We're seeing the result of the ascension. You know, when Jesus proceeded into the heavenly city, when he ascended and there was a parade and he basically proceeds into the heavenly city, and we see this in Psalm 24, You have these angelic people calling out basically to one another, and they're asking, who is this King of glory? And the other side answers, the Lord.
Jeffrey Heine:The Lord mighty. The Lord mighty in battle. Lift up your gates. Lift up your ancient doors that the king of glory may come in. Who is this king of glory?
Jeffrey Heine:He's the lord of hosts. He is the king of glory, and they're they're calling to one another. And there's this procession, and and Jesus goes into the heavenly city after he has ascended. He sits down at the right hand of God. He sits down in power, and he asked of his father.
Jeffrey Heine:He says, remember what you promised me. Remember, you promised me the nations is my inheritance. You promised. And as any good father would, the father grants the request to his son and gives him the nations as his inheritance, and the Spirit of God falls on this group of men and sets them on fire to spread the gospel to the nations. And so we're seeing here the the fulfillment, the outcome of of Ascension Sunday, when the Spirit of God falls down so we might declare the kingship of Jesus.
Jeffrey Heine:And here in Acts chapter 2, we when this happens, we have what, what you might call a perfect storm. You have, the disciples when the spirit falls, they are baptized with the spirit. They are filled with the spirit. They're not just filled. They're extraordinarily filled with the spirit.
Jeffrey Heine:And then revival happens. And not just a personal revival, not just revival inside a little church here. You have revival spreading through the city in which 3,000 people are saved like that. This is a very unusual event here, not to be repeated. We've seen elements like this happen in church history.
Jeffrey Heine:You have, like, the protestant reformation in which I would see as a a very large scale revival spreading. Or you have the great awakening in which God's spirit comes, and there's this very large scale revival, and the ripples are felt all throughout the world. But here you have this kind of perfect storm here of all of these events and this unique event of Pentecost. As a matter of fact, it's so, unique. It's almost otherworldly.
Jeffrey Heine:I was I was talking with somebody who said, yeah. It reminds me of comic books. Like, what? Like, you know what? I mean, just can't it's it's comic books.
Jeffrey Heine:You know, like in when you're reading, like, a Marvel comic book, which I I don't, by the way. But for those of you out there who do, reading a Marvel comic book, there's always some kind of explosion. There's always some kind of fire. There's some kind of nuclear accident that happens, and miraculously, people survive. And when they survive, they're given some kind of mutant powers.
Jeffrey Heine:And they could go out and they could do all of these extraordinary things, and that's kind of what happens with the disciples. There's this event. It happens. There's fire. There's noisy wind.
Jeffrey Heine:There's storms. There's there's all of this and they're given these mutant powers and and they could go and speak in other languages. They could go and, you know, just touch people when they're healed. They could go and raise the dead. And people who kind of think of Pentecost like that, it's a very easy temptation to say there is no way that is real life.
Jeffrey Heine:There's no way that can actually apply to my life. That's just that's otherworldly. That's just out there. There's nothing I can take from that. But there's plenty that we can learn here, because God is still God.
Jeffrey Heine:He is still God, and he still comes. He still invades our lives. He still transforms us. He still sets us on fire. Uses us for his glory in unexpected ways.
Jeffrey Heine:And sometimes this can be through an extraordinary event. Perhaps you're going to fall on the floor. You're going to speak in tongues for an hour. Perhaps it will happen to you, or perhaps it's going to be more quiet in the quietness of your heart. But but either way, whether through an extraordinary event or through quietness, the Spirit of God is going to come and make Jesus real to you.
Jeffrey Heine:That's that's the important thing. Has Jesus become real to you? Do you want to, you know, do you feel like just picking up the phone and telling people, Jesus is real. He is real. I mean, I I he is he's actually alive.
Jeffrey Heine:He's working. He's moving. He's real. Or is that just a completely foreign conversation to you? That's what the spirit of God comes and he does.
Jeffrey Heine:Now I realize in this room, as I look around, that there's a number of of you here, and I've talked with you that are interested in Christianity, maybe curious about Christianity, but you would not yet call yourself a Christian. And then I I appreciate you being here. One of the things I want to say to you is that you were created to experience this. You, you were ex you were created to experience the Spirit of God coming into your life and transforming you. You had at the turn of 20th century, there was a lot of modern thinkers at the time.
Jeffrey Heine:You had Nietzsche, Freud, Marx. They all said at the time that humankind would outgrow its need for the spiritual or for religion. That that as we basically, they didn't use the word evolve, but, you know, as we evolved and as we became more modern, science would fill in the gaps. You know, that religion was answering. Science would soon explain what we had to use religion for kind of as a crutch to get us through life.
Jeffrey Heine:And so as we grew in our knowledge, as we as science expanded and grew and answered more questions, there will no longer be a need for the spiritual. No need to seek seek spiritual experiences. And that was about, you know, 100, 150 years ago. And since then, that has been proved so wrong. So wrong.
Jeffrey Heine:People today, modern scientific people are just as hungry for a spiritual experience. That that has not died. If anything, this is increased. People are hungry, and they're thirsty for for some kind of spiritual meaning. Let me let me ask you for those of you who are wondering about these things.
Jeffrey Heine:You look at every other desire you have as a human. Every other real desire you have, there is a way to meet that desire. You're hungry, you get food. You're thirsty, you get water. There's there's real ways to meet those desires.
Jeffrey Heine:Do you think that the spiritual desire that you have is the only desire in which there is not a way in which it could be fulfilled? Do do do you really think that? You were made for this. You were made to enjoy God forever. You're made to be in his presence.
Jeffrey Heine:And the way that we are in his presence is when he gives us his spirit, and his presence comes and lives in us. Let let's walk through this text. Let's walk through this passage and see how how this plays out. And chapter 2 begins with the phrase, when the day of Pentecost arrived. A few weeks ago, I had I mentioned I hope you realize it was a joke.
Jeffrey Heine:But I mentioned, you know, if if if I had been in charge of the universe, I would have done things differently. And that I would not have waited to send the spirit of God down. I like the symmetry and I would have loved as Jesus went up, the spirit went down. Like, you know, just it I love the symmetry and that's how I would have done things. But God had different plans and he decided to wait until the day of Pentecost.
Jeffrey Heine:And on the day of Pentecost, he sent his spirit down. And I remember one time I was teaching a college Bible study, which just being asked was a bad idea of who whoever did that. And I was actually teaching through this and somebody asked, well, why was it on Pentecost? And I said, well, really doesn't have any meaning. It was just kind of a coincidence.
Jeffrey Heine:Had to come someday. And and the reason I said that was because I was an idiot. And and I just I really hadn't thought through it and I really hadn't studied and it has everything to do with the day of Pentecost. You you need to understand the day of Pentecost if you're gonna understand what here. I mean, seriously, Jesus could have sent his spirit anytime, but he waited and he chose this one Jewish celebration, this one day.
Jeffrey Heine:Why? For coincidence? No. There's a purpose why he sent his spirit at this moment. Pentecost is called, and some of you might have little notations on it, the the Feast of Weeks, the Festival of the First Fruits.
Jeffrey Heine:It was celebrated 50 days after the Passover. Actually is some of the reasons called the Festival of Weeks is because it's a week of weeks. It's 7 weeks. And after 49 days, you celebrate on that 50th day, Pentecost. Actually, Pentecost in Greek means 50th.
Jeffrey Heine:So it's the 50th day after the atonement or after sorry, after Passover. And it was also it was a it was a key day for for two reasons. They they celebrated 2 things on that day. It was a celebration of when the law was given to the people of Israel at Mount Sinai. They arrived there on the 50th day after being delivered through Passover.
Jeffrey Heine:So it was a celebration of the law being given to them, and it was also a celebration of the end of harvest. At the end of harvest, they would bring forth their first fruits and they would feast. And so let's let's look at the first of these. Sent the destroyer down and killed the firstborn of every Egyptian, but passed over the Israelites' homes because they had put the blood up there. And so we have the Passover and he had rescued the Israelites from the bondage of Egypt and they went packing and walking through the desert And they did that for 50 days until they landed at Mount Sinai.
Jeffrey Heine:After 50 days and they got there, and then God gave them the Ten Commandments and the rest of the law. This was both a wonderful and a terrifying time for the Israelites. It was a mixture of both. It was wonderful, and it was terrifying. It was wonderful because God had rescued them.
Jeffrey Heine:Because God is is now with them and for them. It was terrifying because have you ever read what happened at Mount Sinai? It was a terrifying event. God says, alright. Moses tell the people nobody could go near the mountain.
Jeffrey Heine:If anybody touches the mountain, they're dead. They're dead. Hey, listen to this description in Exodus 19. It says, On the morning of 3rd day, there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast so that all the people in the camp trembled. Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God.
Jeffrey Heine:And they took their stand at the foot of the mountain. Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the Lord had descended on it in fire. The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln and the whole mountain trembled greatly. And as the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him in thunder. I mean, can you imagine how terrifying that would be?
Jeffrey Heine:I I mean, if you just go camping now and a thunderstorm comes up, you're scared. I mean, now you're camping at this mountain, and all of a sudden smoke starts wrapping around the mountain. There's lightning. There's thunder. There's a trumpet sounding from who knows where, and it keeps getting louder and louder.
Jeffrey Heine:And so you're trembling. And then the next chapter they tell Moses, like, we're not getting anywhere near it. It says they start backing away from the mouth. It says, you talk to God because if he speaks to us, we will die. We don't want anything to do with this, and they're trembling greatly.
Jeffrey Heine:Now it was here at this terrifying event that God gives them the law. Now you got to flash forward 1400 years to these disciples in acts 2 who were gathered together on the day of Pentecost celebrating what happened at Sinai. And once again, now you have God descending down upon his people. Once again, there's fire. Once again, there's the, the sounds of a storm.
Jeffrey Heine:But this time there's no terror. There's no no running, running away. There's there's not that here. And and unlike Mount Sinai when when the fire fell down on the mountain and and, you know, kind of consumed the mountain there, it was only Moses. Here you have fire falling and it rests on each individual believer.
Jeffrey Heine:Fire rest on each one. Each believer here is having their own Sinai experience. That's what's happening here. Each one of them is meeting with the Lord, and each believer is having the law given to them. But this time, the law is not being written on tablets of stone.
Jeffrey Heine:The law is being written on their hearts. They're all having this personal Mount Sinai experience. We we read about this earlier in Jeremiah 31 where it was prophesied when Jeremiah said, behold, the days are coming, declares the lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. Not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, not when I took them to Sinai. Because my covenant, they broke then.
Jeffrey Heine:Though I was their husband, declares the lord. But this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the lord. And And I will be their god, and they shall be my people. So don't miss this. This is what we see here happening in Acts 2.
Jeffrey Heine:We have the ushering in of the new covenant. Through God's spirit, we have the the ushering in of this, and now the law is being written on our hearts. So instead of the law having to work from the outside in, now the law is written on our hearts and it can work itself out. And we can begin living the law and this new power that that was not possible before. We've been given this new heart and with this new heart, we have the power to obey this this law.
Jeffrey Heine:And and just like at Mount Sinai where God was creating this new community, this new community, community, this new community that was supposed to be a light into the nations. And he was saying that y'all are supposed to love one another, and you're supposed to serve one another, and you're supposed to to glorify me, and you're supposed to obey this law, and it made this new community. Here in acts, we have a new community being formed. But unlike back at Sinai, where the people might have lasted 10 minutes before they broke the law, Here, you see people utterly transformed. And they love one another in a way that the world has never seen.
Jeffrey Heine:They are so selfless and serving that the Roman Empire takes notice and stands in wonder. Within just even a few centuries, Christianity has spread over all of Rome. These people become the community of God that they were to be. Let me tell you, God's spirit still does that in our lives. He comes, kind of like a mighty wind, suddenly, and he disrupts things.
Jeffrey Heine:When when the Spirit of God comes, he's gonna turn your life upside down. It's gonna disrupt. He's gonna rearrange things. It's gonna make up what you see as a mess, but he's actually bringing order. He's writing his law on your heart, and he's empowering you to do it.
Jeffrey Heine:He's making you more like Jesus. Now, besides being a celebration of Mount Sinai and the giving of the law, Pentecost is also the celebration of the harvest. It was a celebration of the last day of the harvest, when the harvest was completed. And on this day, people would feast. They would bring forth forth their first fruits from the harvest.
Jeffrey Heine:It was this tremendous day of of rejuvenation and relaxation and just lots of eating, and it was, it's kind of similar to our day of Thanksgiving. That would be a good way to think. It was like when you just the bounty is before you, and you just eat, and you've got nothing else to do, and it's just I mean, it's just a wonderful day in which you give thanks to God for his provision. That's kind of what this is. And with Israel being a agrarian society, this was a very important day because they would work for months months months, and they would exhaust themselves in all of their efforts.
Jeffrey Heine:And then the harvest time, they would exhaust themselves even more, and they would work tirelessly. And finally, when it was all in, they're like, they get to sit down, cease working, and eat of the fruits, And it was just such a joyful and rejuvenating time. And in some ways, besides Thanksgiving, it reminds me of Memorial Day, which we just celebrated, which not in its significance. There's no significance like Memorial Day has significance. But it's during Memorial Day is when I kinda get the first fruits of summer for me.
Jeffrey Heine:You know, you got that extended weekend, finally. This past Memorial Day, we went to a friend's house and, just barbecued till you could barbecue no more. Just ate till you were so full. Then we played this epic bocce match that lasted over an hour, and it was just it was like and one of the reasons that I that I just love it is because it's the first fruits. When we get to Memorial Day and I experience that, I know summer is coming.
Jeffrey Heine:There's gonna be more days like that. There there's gonna be a a vacation. There's gonna be, some more time off. There's gonna be big blockbuster movies with horrible CGI effects that cost 1,000,000,000 of dollars. Whatever it is, but you know, it's just kind of fun and rejuvenating, and you don't have to work as hard there to relax.
Jeffrey Heine:That's similar to Pentecost here. The festival of the harvest. It was this time of rejuvenation after hard work. It's no coincidence that the spirit of God fell that day. If the people of God had been laboring under so many sacrifices, so many laws, so many regulations.
Jeffrey Heine:Keep failing and trying and failing doing and doing all this. And then similar to the harvest in which they're rejuvenated, God's spirit blows in and gives them rest, gives them joy. He he comes and he gives them new life. He gives them new energy. He gives them this unspeakable joy.
Jeffrey Heine:We know Psalm 16 11 says that in God's presence, there's fullness of joy. Well, now his presence has come, and they're joyful. Jesus said that I will come and I, I come to give you life and now there's life to the full. You know, this is, this is why those who are filled with the spirit, I think, are just compelled to sing. It's, you know, why why in the world do we gather together in a worship service and we take up so much time singing?
Jeffrey Heine:It's because when you look at Ephesians 5 and look at Colossians 3, it says that when we are filled with the spirit, that we sing to the Lord and we make melody in our hearts. That's what we do. It's a joyful time. Now at the celebration of Pentecost here, when people would sit down and they would eat and they would get that, you know, maybe that first ripened date, You know, and they would eat that. Man, it would just taste so good.
Jeffrey Heine:Kind of like when, you know, our garden. I picked our first tomato about 3 days ago. We grow cherry tomatoes, and I picked the first one and it was just perfect. And I just ate it, and my my taste buds kind of exploded. And and one of the reasons that I loved it is because I knew it was the first.
Jeffrey Heine:That this summer, a whole lot more is coming. And that, you know, come summer, all of our kids, all their dresses, the girls, there's just gonna be red stains going down, because they will eat so many tomatoes from our garden. And and every time I'm working outside, I will eat tomatoes from the garden, and I could just I just know it's coming, and it's gonna be so joyful. Let me tell you, this is the first fruits of the spirit. Paul says that in Romans 8.
Jeffrey Heine:He says that we have been given the first fruits of the spirit. And part of the joy of receiving this joy is knowing it's just a taste of what is to come. When heaven comes to earth, When sin is no more. When there is no more sorrow. No more tears, and and there we see God face to face.
Jeffrey Heine:But we get a real taste of this now. A real taste of heaven now. This is something that is available to all of us. This isn't a pretend taste. This isn't just a described taste.
Jeffrey Heine:You're not just looking at a picture. You actually get to experience the first fruits now. And like the disciples, when that happens, it will have the same effect. It will set you on fire. And I love what happens after this.
Jeffrey Heine:I'm gonna look at this next week. When this happened to them, they didn't burst out of that room and be like, hey everybody. You know, wow. Let me tell you about my personal experience. Let me tell you how God's delivered me.
Jeffrey Heine:Let me it wasn't all about me. It says they went out and they declared the works of God. The wonderful works of God. They were set on fire for his glory after tasting us. That's what the Holy Spirit does.
Jeffrey Heine:I pray for us as a church that we taste and know that the Lord is good. Pray with me now. What a day, Lord. We thank you for sending your spirit at Pentecost and for ushering in a new age to which we don't have to read the word of God written on stone, and then be powerless to obey it. But you have written your word on our hearts, and you have filled us with delight and a joy and a power to obey and to serve.
Jeffrey Heine:And your spirit has filled us up with such joy, and part of the joy is knowing that it's the first fruits of what is to come. And Lord, may that set us on fire as a church. I pray for those in this room that do not know you. Even now, may your spirit fall in open hearts. May you be thick in this room, moving and working.
Jeffrey Heine:We pray this in the name of Jesus and for His glory.
