Today is Pentecost Sunday. Last Sunday was Ascension Sunday. Today is Pentecost Sunday. Pentecost literally means “fiftieth” in Greek. That’s where the name comes from. It is the 50th day after Passover. If you're Jewish, you would reckon it from the Passover. For Christians, it is the 50th day after Easter. So we reckon it from Easter. Easter and Passover fall in the same time, but it is the 50th day.
Easter Sunday—you know Jesus rose from the grave—and He appeared to His disciples. Then, over the course of 40 days, Jesus appeared many different times in many different ways to many different people. We have looked at several of the stories of the resurrection over the last several weeks since Easter. For 40 days, Jesus appeared in resurrected form to people. Then He ascended into Heaven, and 10 days after He ascended into Heaven was Pentecost Sunday—the Pentecost Sunday that we are remembering today.
What is Pentecost? It was originally the Jewish holiday that celebrated the giving of the Law of Moses to the people of Israel at Mount Sinai. Remember that? Way back in Exodus, as the Israelites—slaves—left from Egypt, they were wandering through the desert and went up to the mountain, Mount Sinai. Moses went up on top of the mountain, and like it shows in the movie with Charlton Heston, God gave them the two tablets of the Ten Commandments, right? He brought the Law down—it was the Ten Commandments, but it was also all the Law that is in the book of Moses, or the books of Moses—so that the people of Israel would know how to live as God’s people.
Every year, the Israelites wanted to remember that special moment, and they celebrated Pentecost with a feast 50 days after the Passover. Now it’s important to keep that purpose of Pentecost in your mind. What was the purpose? To remember that God gave the Israelites—what? The Law. Okay, good.
It is also known as the Feast of Weeks, because they saw it as a week of weeks. A week of weeks—how many days are in a week? Seven. So they thought, well, let’s say seven weeks of seven days. Here’s a little math—you didn’t know you were going to do math when you came to church today! Seven times seven is what? Forty-nine. Very good. You know your times tables still, even after all these years. Seven times seven is 49. Then, after the 49 days—the week of weeks has been observed—on the 50th day you have the Pentecost feast. And what does Pentecost mean? Fiftieth, right! So on the 50th day, they celebrate it.
So we’re going to read the story of what happened to the disciples on the celebration of Pentecost—50 days after the Passover, 50 days after Jesus rose from the grave. It comes from
Acts 2:1-8
1 On the day of Pentecost[a] all the believers were meeting together in one place. 2 Suddenly, there was a sound from heaven like the roaring of a mighty windstorm, and it filled the house where they were sitting. 3 Then, what looked like flames or tongues of fire appeared and settled on each of them. 4 And everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other languages,[b] as the Holy Spirit gave them this ability.
5 At that time there were devout Jews from every nation living in Jerusalem. 6 When they heard the loud noise, everyone came running, and they were bewildered to hear their own languages being spoken by the believers.
7 They were completely amazed. “How can this be?” they exclaimed. “These people are all from Galilee, 8 and yet we hear them speaking in our own native languages!
Pentecost, also known as the Feast of Weeks or the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, celebrated the day that God gave Moses the Law in order for them to live as God's people. To represent God to the whole world, they had to know how to live. So God gave them all of these different rules and regulations and ceremonial laws so that they would stand out among the nations as holy and different from everyone else, so that they could show the world who God was. They celebrated that every year.
But of course, if we’ve ever read much of the Bible or known many Bible stories, we know the problem was that the Israelites were constantly not following God’s Law, right? And it could be because they forgot the Law. There were many times that they forgot the Law. There are a couple different times I read in the Scriptures where it says they discovered the book of the Law—it was hidden. It was kind of like the Bibles that we sometimes stick on a shelf and don’t ever read and forget about.
They forgot about it, and then they found it, and they would read it and say, “Oh my goodness, we’ve not been doing these things.” Sometimes it was because they forgot. Sometimes it was because they were rebellious people and they didn’t want to do what God told them to do. They wanted to do things their own way. Anybody ever felt like that? We all do from time to time.
So, in the Scriptures it was often looked forward to—it was a vision and prophesied—that one day there was going to be a change. For instance, in Jeremiah 31:33, the prophet Jeremiah prophesied:
“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.”
This is talking about a future time that’s coming when the Law is not going to be written on stone tablets like we see in the movie The Ten Commandments, and it's not even necessarily going to be written in a book like we have in our Bibles. It’s going to be written on our hearts and put in our minds.
Jeremiah says this is the way it’s going to be in the new covenant: “I’m going to put my law in their hearts and in their minds.” So, on the day of Pentecost, as they are celebrating the giving of the Law, something amazing happens. God sends the Holy Spirit—His own Holy Spirit—to come and dwell in believers’ hearts. So the Law of God is now inside those who believe in Jesus Christ and seek to follow Him.
That can mean a lot of different things, but one thing it means is this: now it’s not just that we have to go to a book to see what God has said. God Himself is living inside us. We have Him right there with us all the time—everywhere you go, everything you do, no matter what time of day it is—God is inside you.
And the Holy Spirit is telling you, “Look, you know you ought not be doing that.” You feel it. There’s a conscience inside you that’s saying, “Oh, I shouldn’t do that.” If you’re listening, it will guide you.
Another thing that it’s saying is that the Law of God is not just something written externally that you follow because you’re supposed to be obedient. Now, it’s something that’s in your heart. It’s something that you actually want to do. As you recognize how much God has loved you and what Jesus Christ has done for you on the cross, when you begin to really feel that in your heart—know that in your heart—it’s not just that you are obeying the rules because you’re supposed to. Now you are obeying the rules because you want to honor God. You want to show Him that you love Him. You want to do what makes Him happy. So you actually now begin to have your heart transformed into something that’s not rebellious but wants to be obedient. As the Holy Spirit writes the Word on your heart, it begins to change.
This all happened at Pentecost in the second chapter of Acts, as they were remembering the first time God gave them the Law. It’s a moment that is rich with symbolism.
First of all, we see how Christians became the new temple—the new tabernacle. Think about this. In the story, it tells us that there was the sound of what? A mighty rushing wind. The word that it uses—the Greek word—is pneuma. The Hebrew word is ruach. It means—it’s hard to translate it into English directly—but it basically means the Spirit/Breath of God.
We see this throughout the Scriptures. Go all the way back to the beginning of your Bible, Genesis 1:2. In Greek, it says pneuma. In Hebrew, it says ruach. It is the Spirit/Breath of God that is hovering over the waters at creation. And then what happens? God speaks. And when you speak, what happens? Your breath comes through your vocal cords and makes sound. The Spirit/Breath of God speaks and says, “Let there be light. Let there be stars in the sky and a moon and a sun. Let there be land and let there be water.” So the Spirit speaks, and these things come into existence.
Then, in the second chapter of Genesis, God forms Adam from the dust of the ground, and then it says that He breathed into his nostrils and brought him to life. The Spirit/Breath of God comes into Adam and brings him to life.
Another example is the story in Ezekiel 37—a wonderful story. Ezekiel the prophet is walking along—maybe he's on a hike—and he comes across a valley that is filled with dry bones. Imagine that. Have you ever been walking in the woods and seen some old bones on the ground? Like an old deer that died or a squirrel or something, and the bones have been there and rotted away. But he sees a whole valley full of bones, and these are not animal bones. These are the bones of an army that was slaughtered and left in the field, and now it’s just dried, bleached bones.
And God says to Ezekiel, “Son of man, can these bones live again?” Ezekiel’s smart—he’s not going to say. He just simply says, “Well, You’re God. You’re the one that knows.” And God tells Ezekiel, “Speak the Spirit/Breath into the bones and they will come alive.” And he speaks, and the bones stand up, and flesh comes back on the bones, and they become living people once again.
And God says to Ezekiel, “This is what I’m telling you. This is a vision. You spoke the message as He commanded you, and breath came into the bodies, and they all came to life as a great army.” Then God said to me, “Son of man, these bones represent the people of Israel.”
So as the Spirit of God comes along to these dead, dry bones, He says, “This is what My people are like. They’re like dead, dry bones with no life in them.” At that time, the tribes of Israel had been scattered and dispersed. There was no hope to bring them back together. And God says, “But I am going to bring My people Israel back together with the Spirit/Breath of God.”
Now, at Pentecost, the Spirit/Breath of God dwells inside every follower of Jesus Christ. And this is represented in the Scripture we read today by tongues of fire that come to rest upon the heads of every Christian that’s gathered there in the room with the disciples.
This also is rich with meaning, looking back through the Old Testament. You go back to the time when the Israelites were going through the desert and they had a tabernacle tent where they would worship God. It says that by day, a pillar of cloud would rest on the tabernacle. And at night, the pillar of cloud would glow red with fire, representing the presence of God that was dwelling in the tabernacle.
It says whenever the cloud or the pillar of fire would move off of the tabernacle, that was the sign to the Israelites: it’s time to move. God is moving. So they would pack up the tabernacle tent and they would hit the road, and they would follow God wherever He was leading them.
That was what happened in the Old Testament. But here, in Pentecost in the New Testament, the pillar of fire is now resting over—what? Is it resting over a tent? No. It’s resting over the people who believe in Jesus Christ and are following Him.
The tabernacle was a portable temple where God dwelt among His people. But in the New Testament, we are the tent. We’re the tabernacle. Those of us who believe in Jesus Christ—because of Pentecost, Christians have become the new temple of God. We are the people of God. We are those dry bones that were out in the field, dead and lifeless, but we have been brought back to life to fulfill the purposes that God gave His people.
Acts 2:4 says, “Everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other languages, as the Holy Spirit gave them this ability.”
Now, a lot has been said about speaking in tongues. Of course, we often look to our Pentecostal brothers and sisters because they like to speak in tongues in their services. And if you’ve ever heard it, it can be either an amazing, awesome thing—or a really freaky thing if you’re not used to it.
But I want to point out that in this instance in Acts 2, they are not speaking gibberish. They’re not speaking some unknown language or even an angelic language. These were real languages that people spoke on earth—the languages of all the different ethnic groups that were gathered in Jerusalem at that time from around the world.
If you read farther down in the chapter, it tells you about the different nations represented—Parthians, Medes, Greeks, Egyptians, Romans, and more. These Galileans, who didn’t know how to speak those languages, were suddenly, supernaturally enabled to talk in them—languages they had never learned before.
Why? It was to fulfill God’s original intent for Israel. The original purpose for God’s people was to be a light to the Gentiles—to represent God to the whole world—to help the whole world come to know God and follow Him.
We can see that purpose spelled out throughout the Old Testament. God always intended for Israel to be a witness to the nations—a beacon of light pointing the world to the one true God. This calling is fulfilled and expanded in Jesus and in the Church’s mission to make disciples of all nations.
And I want you to notice something else important, too. The believers started speaking in tongues before there was anybody there to hear them. They were all Galileans in the room, and all of a sudden, they started talking in other languages—each one speaking a different language.
They started speaking in tongues in verse 4, but the outsiders didn’t come to hear them until verse 6. There was nobody else there—it was all believers, all disciples. Everyone else was outside doing their own thing.
Why did they come running? It says, “When they heard the loud noise, everyone came running, and they were bewildered to hear their own languages being spoken by the believers.”
So imagine all the people milling around. It’s like if we’re here gathered in the church building, and there are people out there going to Ace Hardware, trying to beat the Baptists to lunch. All of a sudden, they hear something happening inside our church—a mighty rushing wind—and a bunch of people start talking. They can't quite make it out, but they know something amazing is happening. And they come running to see, “What are those disciples doing? What’s going on in there?”
When they get there, that’s when they hear the believers speaking in their own languages.
The Spirit gave them the gift to speak in other languages. The believers responded to the Spirit. They obeyed. And the noise drew the crowd.
There’s a quote I love, attributed to John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement. He said something like this: “If you will light the church on fire with the Holy Spirit, the whole world will come to watch it burn.”
Have you ever seen a house catch on fire? If you see something like that—a car on fire, a house on fire—everybody comes to see it. It’s usually a bad thing, a destructive thing. But fire can be a good thing too.
When the church is filled with Holy Spirit fire—when we catch fire with the Spirit and we start doing the amazing things God calls us to do—people want to see it. They start coming to see why.
Why is that important for us today?
We don’t need to wait for the crowds to show up. We don’t need to wait for more children to come. We don’t need to wait for something else to happen.
The Holy Spirit of God—who created the stars in heaven, the mountains around us, and filled the oceans with water—lives inside us and enables us to worship and witness boldly.
So let the Spirit speak through you. Don’t wait for something else. Go ahead and be obedient. Be filled with the Spirit’s power. Use the gifts that He gives you. Worship boldly. Witness boldly. Live for Jesus boldly.
Live out loud. Speak the truth. And it will draw the crowd that needs to come and hear it.
We often want to wait for the “right time,” but Pentecost calls us to be the spark—the spark that gets things started. The Holy Spirit works through bold obedience before the results are visible.
The coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost changed everything. God no longer dwells in a temple made by human hands. He dwells in His people.
His people—the Church—now includes all nations, not just Israel. And His law is no longer just carved in stone but is written on our hearts.
But don’t miss what happened first: the believers didn’t wait for the crowds to gather before they spoke. They simply obeyed. They opened their mouths. They spoke as the Spirit gave them the ability.
So I ask you: what would happen if you did the same?
What if we worshiped boldly—even if we looked around and noticed some people were missing?
What if we served generously—even before we knew exactly what was needed or how it would all work out?
What if we shared the gospel—even if we weren’t sure anyone was listening?
But we decided we would live the way Christ called us to live. And we would speak out and be bold.
The fire falls before people respond.
So don’t wait.
Don’t hold back.
Be the spark that ignites those around you.
Live out loud.
Speak the truth.
And watch how the Spirit draws people—people who need to hear the good news, who need to be part of the love that God has for us, who need to find the reconciliation with God and with one another that comes through Jesus Christ.
