Pentecost, The Shift to the Spirit

[HKHaugan]

Pentecost, The Shift to the Spirit

The single most important event after the coming of the Lord Jesus is His sending the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. This is where the shift to true reality begins for each of us. Spirituality is the ultimate reality. It is the Holy Spirit who brings our minds, our hearts and our spirits into spiritual reality, our personal alignment with the Lord Jesus. Here is where the Lord Jesus establishes a personal relationship with us by entering our hearts through the Spirit. All through the Gospels Jesus is presented as the external God who comes close to us in the body of a man. Through the Holy Spirit Jesus becomes our internal relational Lord, Emmanuel, God within.

His earthly mission was a visible mission to reach the heart of every single human being through faith that they would realize they were created spiritually to be spiritual beings having a human experience. By faith He lived and by faith He returned to reign fully as King of Heaven. He demonstrated He is the way to Heaven, the truth of Heaven as well as the life of Heaven. His death on the Cross and His rising from the dead by faith has made Him available to everyone through faith. It is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, the Spirit of faith, who has made this possible. Now the Lord Jesus through the Holy Spirit knocks on the door of every heart and enters those who are willing to receive Him. Because of this fact we are going to spend the next few pages visiting the Pentecost event itself.

One thing dominates life in the Spirit, the unexpected, the surprising, the real 'new.' “It is of the Lord's mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness (Lam.3:22-23).” Christ introduced something brand new---everything spiritual is a revelation in every next moment. His Spirit is always bringing us into a new unique moment of choice and decision, the outcome of which depends on faith in Him. Our relationship with the Lord is based on revelation not on religion. Religion is stagnating. Revelation is a relational experience always getting us to look forward in every next moment. Hold that thought as we continue.

Acts 2:1-4 “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.”

We are going to take this passage one verse at a time. The Pentecost event is so important for us as believers that we need to, as the prayer says, “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.”

Vs.1 When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place.

First, it is the ‘day.’ When you look at this passage closely it is the arrival of something dramatically different, new and visible. Jewish history of course had a series of dramatically different events from the Flood, the Passover, the parting of the Red Sea, the giving of the Ten Commandments, the pillars of fire and cloud leading God’s people through the wilderness and the miracles surrounding the prophets but these were external actions of God. They were external reminders that God is always present and in control. They were external manifestations of the power of God and they happened in a one place at a one time with a one people.

But what happened at Pentecost was something no one anticipated, no one expected and no one guessed. This is important because you can't out-think, out-maneuver or out-plan the Lord God. He doesn't think or operate the way we do because His mind is pure, perfect and holy. As sinners our minds are trapped by world experience.

Isn't it great to have our One God who thinks and acts outside the box?

The Scripture is loaded with God doing the unexpected. That's why we need to put our faith totally in Him regardless of circumstance. Take the prophets for instance. Even though they spoke of a new experience (The Law written on the heart, Jer.31:33 also Joel 2:28-32), that experience was culturally interpreted as the arrival of a deliverer who would right the world politically. Again it would be another external experience to prove the Jews were right and give them worldly power. Already they had been given the revelation of One Father, a Messiah of deliverance from foreign oppression was on the way. This time however, it would not be external. It would be internal. This would be the seal, the final gift, the One Spirit and it would be in one place. All the disciples were told to do was to wait and not leave Jerusalem. The key here is to focus on the Lord, serve Him in faith and let Him produce the unexpected in every next moment.

Apply this to the word 'day.' What had been blurred in the ‘night’ of mystery and lost in the ‘darkness’ of sin will be visible to all. This is more than a 12-hour day trapped in man’s limited physical apprehension of sunrise and sunset. It is a spiritual day dawning and the murky night of fear being overcome. What we know now on this side of the Cross and the Resurrection is what had been hidden in the dark night of the past. The devil, his sin and evil spirits were hiding in the darkness of fear, intimidation and self-centeredness. Now they were drawn out into the open by the Cross, their power forever negated as majestically shown by the Resurrection. But far more than that, this was a day of God’s lighting the heart, opening the mind and restoring our spirit with His Holy Spirit. This was spiritual daylight.

Second, it was the day of Pentecost. Pentecost (Gk.-fiftieth) the Feast of the Firstfruits, the thanksgiving for the corn harvest, which took place 50 days after the Passover. Like all things in the Old Testament it was a ‘shadow and copy’ of things to come. There would be a spiritual harvest, people coming alive in the Spirit, discovering intimacy with God and one another, the Body of Christ growing by leaps and bounds and the arrival of the Kingdom of God against which the gates of hell would crumble. The mind would believe spiritually and find a broad expansive world and universal view. The heart would trust spiritually and find the pleasure of relational fulfillment on a level none could have imagined. The lonely isolated spirit would discover a transformed faith that moved from self to Jesus providing a power of thought, confidence in identity and assurance in action. This was a harvest of meaning, significance and purpose.

Third, the day of Pentecost had come. But these ‘firstfruits’ were different. The Cross and the Resurrection of Jesus would herald in a new spiritual revelation. All that has been described, His promise of ‘living water’ that would never cease, of the gift He would send, the Spirit of truth, the fulfillment of prophecy that the heart would be transformed and we would be born again spiritually and that He would actually be at one with us in our minds and hearts through His Holy Spirit, these firstfruits of the Spirit of God became a reality, all of it had arrived. But there were far more spiritual fruits in the offing. Spiritual gifts in 1Cor., Rom.12 and Eph.4 and the spiritual atmosphere of love, joy, compassion, sound mind and more mentioned in Gal.5 that enable the spiritual gifts to function. Humanity would be forever challenged, charged and changed.

Fourth, they are in one place. The fact that they were in ‘one place’ is important because it establishes a common shared unified witness. The Apostles knew they could share what each had experienced. They were united in their outreach because their hearts were one in Jesus. ‘One place’ is not separate experiences but the same experience given to many. There is the one place from which God operates and that is the Kingdom of Heaven. One Creation is from one Creator.

There is but one image of God and that is Jesus. Each of us is created to be like that one image. Not the same as but like. There is only one of each of us. No one before or after us will be the same. Each of us has been created to be unique. Each one of us has been given one place in history and in eternity. Jesus showed us that there is only one time to live and die. There is only one life, not many and one way to live that life, not many. There is only one physical death and one eternal destiny for each of us (Heb.9:27).

There is only one Cross, one sacrifice on that Cross and only one Person who could pay the one debt all of us owe (Heb.9:28). There is only one truth, God’s truth as it is revealed in Scripture. There is only one love, God’s love. It would be the sure thing that it was God when He came in one place as He did when He came in the one body of Jesus and one time to return when He comes on the one Day of Judgment when every ‘one,’ each one, will appear before Him.

‘One place’ is One Lord, one faith, one baptism and one God and Father of all, not many lords, many faiths, many baptisms and many gods which was the atmosphere of the world in which they lived. “4There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to one hope when you were called— 5one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all (Eph.4:4-6).” There is only One Good Shepherd, One Light, One Bread, One Blood, One Body, One Gate, One Savior, One Redeemer, One Advocate, One Holy Scripture and none comes to the Father except through the One Lord Jesus, the Christ.