Pentecost: God’s Building

Last week we looked at the ascension of Jesus into heaven and talked about some of the implications of that event. Most importantly, Jesus is acting as an advocate for you in the throne room of heaven. Isn’t this enough for us? To know that Jesus is acting as a priest, a vicarious stand-in, an advocate to God for us? The answer is yes, it is enough, in a sense. But after looking at Jesus’ life of healing and showing compassion, his self-less death for our sins, his defeat of death at the resurrection, and his advocacy and reign at the ascension, what we learn is that God’s mission of love and salvation for us does not give us just the right amount of grace, favor, and love, and no more, but he gives extravagantly. He gives abundantly more than he has to. And at Pentecost, we see him give not only his body and blood, and his advocacy before the Father, but also new birth and sustaining life to the church. God also sends his very Spirit to ignite the Church and to indwell, to live inside believers to help us live out the mission God has for us. Without the Holy Spirit, all of Jesus’ work in his life, death, and resurrection, would go untouched. We are so totally depraved, so unable to lift even our own hand from a dish we’re eating from, that if we’re ever going to move toward the salvation of God in Christ, we need the Holy Spirit  orchestrating our faith, initiating it and sustaining it, and divinely appointing the circumstances and so-called coincidences that bring it into being and move it forward. And so we experience this on a personal level. If you have faith, it’s because the Holy Spirit orchestrated it. But we see it in Acts at the corporate level, the group level, at the birthday of the church on Pentecost. In Acts 2, God visits the people who had gathered in Jerusalem after Jesus’ ascension and initiates their new identity as the Church, members of the people of God. What had been presented to the Judaeans for centuries as a future promise had become something that was unfolding before their eyes. It’s the promise of the Prophet Joel:

Acts 2:17–21 ESV

17 “ ‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; 18 even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy. 19 And I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke; 20 the sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day. 21 And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.’

Again, look at the extravagant language. God does not sprinkle a drop of his Spirit on all flesh, but pours it out. And when he does, he gives us what we need to come to faith and to live it out, to be the Church. That might be visions and prophecies—or teaching and preaching, it might be visions and dreams, which we hear about in Muslim countries, where people who have no other access to even a Bible have dreams where Jesus reveals himself to them and they come to faith. And this pouring out of the Spirit on all flesh begins the period of time which contains the last days, and the Day of Judgment, with signs in the heavens and earth, darkness and a red moon, blood, fire and smoke. But this final, church age we live in is a time where we see all flesh, people of all kinds, calling on the name of the Lord and receiving salvation in Jesus.

And so with Joel’s prophecy seeing its initial fulfillment, the Holy Spirit brings the disciples, gathered together, new life, functioning hearts of faith, empowerment to be the church together, to grasp the work of Jesus on the Cross and at his resurrection, to receive salvation, and to actually step outside their front door and tell another human being about what God has done in Jesus Christ. Because without the Holy Spirit, none of that is possible. Our wills are too broken. We can see this in our passage from Genesis.

Humans, made in the image of the creator God, love to create. But their souls were bruised and out of alignment and so they had all the power to accomplish great things, but the great things they set out to accomplish were not the right things. With their ability and creativity they decide to build a tower up to heaven. A misguided, ill-conceived stairway to heaven. In a sense, just like Adam and Eve, they thought, perhaps, “We will be like God.” And so they started work on this massive tower. Amazing, beautiful, remarkable, but the wrong thing. And to stifle that and future wrong-headed collaboration, God confused their language. Their building project began with the words, “Let us make.” And then in the next chapter of Genesis, God responds by telling Abraham, “I will make.” He says:

Genesis 12:2–3 ESV

2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

God’s building project will go through the line of Abraham, not broken human ambition. And in Acts, we see  a new fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham. It takes elements of the story of the Tower of Babel, but reworks them into a happier and better ending. Instead of seeing the languages of humans that were confused and separated at Babel so they would stop building the wrong thing that glorified themselves, in Acts we see the Holy Spirit enable communication between humans who speak different languages so they could start building the right thing, the church, which glorifies not themselves, but God.  We get a taste of everything that went wrong at the tower of Babel going right, being healed and realigned at Pentecost. And that human ability and drive to make a structure of lasting value is put on a completely new course, the right course, to live out the spread of the gospel, building the church.

So Pentecost is the moment of new beginnings. There God sends the Holy Spirit to show up in power, affirming and strengthening the first Christians, initiating the birth of the Church. From that point on God moves in the hearts and minds of Christians, giving us faith, remaking and realigning us to live out our faith, giving us new gifts, new power to follow Jesus and to help him in His building project, the church, who reaches out our hands in love to the people of the world, doing all that Jesus asks of us in his Word and more.

We can see this in Jesus’ words in John 14:

John 14:12–17 ESV

12 “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. 13 Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it. 15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, 17 even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.

If you have come to faith in Jesus, the Holy Spirit is with you and in you. You are a part of that same church who received the Holy Spirit two-thousand years ago. He will help you in your life of faith to listen to Jesus, to learn from his Word, and be changed, in God’s timing, into the person you were made to be in Christ. So let us celebrate this birthday of the Church, the arrival of the Holy Spirit, equipping us to live out our faith and bring the news of salvation in Jesus to many in these last days in which we live.