Sermon: Seeing God’s voice to Israel & the nations

Pentecost – 28 May 2023
Church of the Redeemed – Conway, PA

Happy Pentecost!

Read Acts 2:1-12

• When the day of Pentecost arrived or The festival of Shavu‘ot arrived…
  • What is Shavuot? Pentecost?
    • The Christian calendar tells the story of our redemption in Jesus, from Christmas to Easter and back to Christmas. 
    • The Christian calendar is tied to Israel’s calendar, which tells the story of Israel’s redemption in the Exodus.
      1. 7 main holy times in the Bible (Lev 23): Passover, Unleavened Bread, Firstfruits, Shavuot/Pentecost/Feast of Weeks, Trumpets, Day of Atonement, Booths/Tabernacles
      2. We’re concerned with Shavuot, which means Weeks in Hebrew. Pentecost means 50 in Greek. 50 days or 7 weeks between Passover and Shavuot/Pentecost. Both are Jewish names. Pentecost is not exclusively a Christian word.
      3. Israel’s holy days all point back to God’s redemption of Israel and forward to God’s redemption of humanity in Jesus
    • Passover-Pentecost cycle that remembers the Exodus
      • In Exodus,
        1. God frees Israel from Egypt on Passover. 
        2. 50 days later, God makes covenant with Israel and gives them his Instruction (Torah), especially the 10 Commandments.
      • In the Gospels, we see this same Passover-Pentecost cycle
        1. Jesus is crucified on Passover. He is our Passover lamb the protects us from death. 
        2. Jesus rises from the dead on the Feast of Firstfruits (a Passover-related holy day)
        3. 50 days from the Resurrection is Pentecost/Shavuot. 
        4. It’s been 50 days since we all celebrated Resurrection Sunday!
  • Why did God pour out the Holy Spirit on Pentecost? Why this day of all days?
    • Earlier we said Israel’s holy days all point back to God’s redemption of Israel and forward to God’s redemption of humanity in Jesus. God has a calendar he keeps. He acts for Israel on the his calendar and then acts for the whole world on the the same calendar.
    • So why does the Holy Spirit come on this particular holy day called Shavuot or Pentecost? Let’s read Acts 2 again for clues
      1. ² Suddenly there came a sound from the sky like the roar of a violent wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. 
      2. ³ Then they saw what looked like tongues of fire, which separated and came to rest on each one of them. 
      3. ⁴  The disciples began to talk in different languages, as the Spirit enabled them to speak.
    • Now to the first Pentecost. Go with me to Exodus 19.
      1. Give context
      2. Read Exodus 19:16-19 
      3. In Exodus 20, God audibly speaks out the 10 Commandments. 
      4. The Children of Israel hear him. Read Exodus 20:18-22
      5. This still doesn’t quite look like Acts 2. We need some help from our Jewish neighbors to better understand.
      6. By the time of Jesus, a very dramatic telling of the giving of the Law had developed.
         • Here’s one excerpt from one of these tellings:
           
           “And it is stated (Exodus 20:15), “And all the people saw the sounds (literally, voices)” – it is not written, “sound,” here, but rather, “sounds.” Rabbi Yochanan said, “The voice would go out and divide into seventy voices for the seventy languages, so that all the nations would hear. And each and every nation would hear in the language of the nation…” [1]
           
         • Why 70 voices, 70 languages? In Genesis 10, after the Flood and before the Tower of Babel, the descendants of Noah are listed as 70 nations. So at Sinai, all the nations of the world were to hear the voice of God.
           
           Now, hold that thought.
           
         • Let me read you another excerpt from our Jewish neighbors.
           
           ‘On the occasion of matan Torah, the Bnai Yisrael not only heard Hashem’s Voice but actually saw the sound waves as they emerged from HaShem’s mouth. They visualized them as a fiery substance. Each Commandment that left Hashem’s mouth traveled around the entire Camp and then came back to every Jew individually asking him, “Do you accept upon yourself this Commandment with all halachos pertaining to it?” Every Jew answered, “Yes,” after each Commandment. Finally, the fiery substance which they saw, engraved itself on the luchos.‘ [2]
           
         • Have you seen the film The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston? It depicts the last part of what I just read: a finger of fire comes out of the Fiery Pillar as God speaks and writes each commandment on the stone tablets.
           
      7. Recap: 50 days after Passover, God meets Israel at Mount Sinai. They not only hear the voice of God say the 10 Commandments, they see his voice as 70 flames, one for each nation listed in Genesis 10.
  • Let’s go back to Acts 2.
    • Like in Exodus, the disciples of Jesus hear wind and see fire.  
    • But instead of God speaking from heaven, he speaks through his disciples to all the nations of the world. 
    • Let’s read Acts 2:5-12.
    • ⁵ Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. Why?
      1. Shavuot/Pentecost is a pilgrim feast – Deuteronomy 16:16: “Three times a year all your males shall appear before the Lord your God at the place that he will choose: at the Feast of Unleavened Bread, at the Feast of Weeks, and at the Feast of Booths.”
      2. Acts tells us there were indeed Jews from all over the world that first Pentecost after the resurrection.
         • Many of those countries we read may not sound familiar today but for the first readers of Acts, they represented the known world of the Roman empire. 
         • According to today’s map, worshipers from these areas heard the disciples speaking in their own languages:
           Iran, Kurdistan, Iraq, Syria, Israel, Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, deeper into Asia, Egypt, Libya, Italy, Greece, Saudi Arabia, maybe even Spain and further into North Africa. Thre were Jews in all these places and they had made pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
      3. What did they hear? They say, “We hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.”
         • Under the power of the Holy Spirit, the disciples – men and women – were worshiping God. They were probably praising God for Jesus, for the resurrection, for the healing they’ve received, for the grace to visibly see the Spirit breathing new life into them. 
         • Later, they will hear Peter – freshly filled with the Holy Spirit – preach a sermon that will cut them to the heart and lead 3,000 Jews to faith in Jesus as Messiah and Lord.
           
  • “What can this mean?” asked those listening. We also need to ask what this means for us today?
    • First, we’ve just seen how Jewish the Pentecost story is. Very few of us in this room are Jewish. Where are we in this story?
      1. In Acts 2:11, it says those listening to the disciples were “both Jews and proselytes”. In other words, those listening were both Jews and Gentile worshipers of Jehovah. 
      2. That is what we are. As Christians, most of us are Gentiles who worship the God of Israel. 
      3. Most of us here are disciples of Jesus. So, like the first disciples, God fills the followers of Jesus with the Holy Spirit. 
    • How then do we respond to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit?
      1. We worship and praise God!
         • When the Spirit comes, the first thing the disciples do is worship. 
         • There’s a prayer I pray every morning:
           
           O Lord open my lips
           And my mouth will proclaim your praise.
           
           It is the Holy Spirit that opens our lips and fills our mouths with the praise of God. 
         • Pilgrimage is part of worship. Last time I was here, we looked at Psalm 122 and its call for pilgrimage. If God is calling you to go to Israel with Pastor Jared, I pray with you that the LORD would provide for the amazing opportunity to worship and learn in the Holy Land. 
      2. We preach the Gospel!
         • The next thing we see later in Acts 2 is Peter preaching the Gospel. He talks about how Jesus died and rose from the dead. Jesus is the Messiah and Lord that Israel and all the nations have been waiting for. He is God in the flesh come to save us from ourselves. The resurrection proved it. 
         • We all have stories of how God has touched us, healed us, delivered us, brought us into the family of God. The Holy Spirit empowers us to tell our stories boldly for the glory of God.
      3. We show the goodness and faithfulness of God with our good works.
         • This is part of preaching the Gospel. Not only do we have stories to tell, but we have good works to do. 
         • We do not do good works to be saved. We do good works because we are saved. Our good works praise God and show God we love him.
         • We pray for healing. We feed the hungry. We comfort the mourning. We lift up the fallen. We sit with the lonely. By the power of the Holy Spirit, we represent Jesus in this fallen world. 

So I say to you again, Happy Pentecost!

Rejoice! The Father and the Son have been faithful to share with us the Comforter, the Spirit of God that empowered the Prophets of old and raised Jesus from the dead. 

Rejoice and proclaim the greatness of Jesus’ name!

Rejoice and share the power and love of God with those around you. 

Let us pray.

Almighty God, on this day, through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, you revealed the way of eternal life to every race and nation: Pour out this gift anew, that by the preaching of the Gospel your salvation may reach to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Footnotes

1. Shemot Exodus 5:9.
2.  Weissman, Moshe, The Midrash Says: Shemot (Brooklyn: Bnay Yakov Publications, 1980), 182.
3. Image credit: Screen capture from The Ten Commandments (1956) via YouTube