The Kindling

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Intro: Importance of Pentecost

  1. One of the four most important days in history.

    1. Christmas

    2. Good Friday

    3. Easter Sunday

    4. Pentecost

  2. To understand why I consider it one of the four most important days in history, a little backstory.

  1. Background on the day of Pentecost

    1. Originally a harvest celebration

      1. The Festival of Weeks, 50 days (or 7 weeks) after Passover

      2. The Celebration of the first fruits of the grain harvest

        1. Preemptive Thanksgiving

        2. We celebrate after we have received; they celebrated before knowing the character of the one who sustained them (act of radical trust)

    2. Over time, came to be associated with Moses bringing the Law on Sinai.

      1. The people of Israel left Egypt on the morning after Passover (Easter Sunday).

      2. They arrived at the foot of Sinai 40 days later, according to Exodus 19.

      3. While the 12 tribes gathered around Mt. Sinai, Moses went up the mountain to hear from God.

      4. While Moses was up the mountain, the 12 tribes were below, and the manifest presence of God fell (wind, fire, and qolot, usually translated thunder, but literally means “voices”)

      5. 10 days later, according to tradition, Moses came down with the Law, the covenant through which they could experience salvation and become the people of God.

      6. And, if we fast-forward a bit in the story, one of their first acts as people of the covenant was to violate the covenant, to worship other gods, and 3,000 of them died as a result of that disobedience.

  2. That Day of Pentecost

    1. Backstory

      1. They had just spent the better part of the last three years in the company of a man whom they quickly came to realize was much more than a man, whom they had come to love as friend, respect and trust as Rabbi, revere as Messiah, and had been prepared to crown as King. He spent three years inspiring them, challenging them, frustrating them, confusing them, just generally making them more uncomfortable than they had ever been before.

      2. Then, He died. More specifically, He was killed by those whose authority He undermined, whose ambition and avarice He threatened.

        1. This, in itself, would have been more than passingly disorienting for them.

        2. In fact, His death put them in the rather precarious position of having backed a failed revolutionary and false Messiah, a very dangerous thing to do at the time.

        3. Immediately following Jesus’ death, their plan must have been to hide their faces and slink back to their former lives hoping that no one saw them going.

      3. But, as we all know, this story was far from over. On the third day after they had hung Him on a cross, Jesus rose from the dead and spent the next 40 days showing them that He was alive and opening their minds to understand the Scriptures.

      4. Then, He took them up a mountain and gave them these instructions to be His witness in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth, to make disciples of all nations.

      5. He told them to go back to Jerusalem and wait for a gift that He wanted to give them, “power from on high,” He called it: the Holy Spirit.

      6. Then, He left, just lifted off into the clouds.

    2. Upper Room

      1. So, they went back to Jerusalem and waited, just like Jesus told them. (their waiting looked like prayer and worship)

      2. Then, this happened:

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. Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!”  Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?” Some, however, made fun of them and said, “They have had too much wine.”

Acts 2:1-13

      1. Just to be clear on what happened here.

        1. 50 days earlier, Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world had died to deliver them from slavery to sin.

        2. 10 days earlier, He had climbed a mountain and ascended into the presence of God, promising to send them a gift from the Father.

        3. The 12/120 gathered in Jerusalem to await this gift.

        4. The Holy Spirit fell on them in wind, fire, and tongues.

        5. What started out as a private prayer gathering turned into a public spectacle (this is how it’s supposed to work, by the way)

        6. They, through the presence of Holy Spirit, received the promised New Covenant.

“For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. Then you will live in the land I gave your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God.”

Ezekiel 36:24-28

“The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. “This is the covenant that I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will they teach their neighbour or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”

Jeremiah 31:31-34

Peter explained to everyone what was happening by quoting from the prophet Joel

“In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people.”

Acts 2:17

They each became the temple

        1. They were each Moses, but they didn’t have to ascend into the presence of God. God came to them.

        2. In fact, each one, the most common people, was greater than Moses, indwelt by the Spirit of God not for a moment but for a lifetime.

      1. 3,000 people were saved

        1. And well beyond.

        2. Within 30 years, Rome

        3. 2,000 years later, the world transformed.

        4. We are here today because of what happened on that day.

  1. What was available to them is available to us.

    1. No differences

    2. So, how do we experience the kind of power and impact that they did?

      1. It is true that the Holy Spirit did the work.

      2. But they also had a part to play. They Holy Spirit is the fire, but they provided the kindling (Todd’s metaphor).

        1. That’s how it works, by the way.

        2. We always have a part to play.

    3. What was the kindling?

      1. Obedience

        1. To the Lordship of Jesus: not merely Savior but King.

        2. Jesus says that there is a significant connection between obedience and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

“If you love me, keep my commands. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—the Spirit of truth.

John 14:15-17a

      1. Commitment to the mission

        1. Their lives were not their own. They were living the life of Jesus (Body of Christ)

        2. “I have been crucified with Christ; therefore, I no longer live…”

        3. “No one should ask to be filled with the Holy Spirit who is not willing to be sent on mission.” I would add, “who is not expecting to be sent.”

      2. Desperation

        1. A task that was beyond them.

          1. Not only were they intrinsically ill-equipped for the task (lack of education, social standing, resources, credibility, etc.), but they also faced immense external challenges. Roman occupied Jerusalem—where, incidentally, Jesus had been crucified just a short time earlier—was (seemingly) not fertile soil for the Gospel message, yet Jesus told them to be His witnesses in Jerusalem.

          2. Jesus himself had received decidedly mixed reviews in Judea, and they had nowhere near His charisma, authority, or power, yet Jesus commanded them to spread the Gospel across Judea.

          3. Relations between Jews and Samaritans were frosty, at best, yet Jesus instructed them to make disciples in Samaria.

          4. The obstacles, challenges, and perils awaiting them among the nations were numerous and immense, yet Jesus had called them to be His ambassadors to the ends of the earth.

        2. They knew they couldn’t do this apart from the power of God, so they prayed.

      3. Prayer

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