The Holy Spirit and the Feast of Pentecost

I am happy to be able to speak about the Holy Spirit. Speaking about the Holy Spirit invigorates us, fills us with joy and enthusiasm simply because of the essence of God moving through our words. I hope you are also enjoying this study about the Spirit-filled life.

In our previous program, we saw that the prophecy the Lord spoke and the commandment He gave His disciples to go into all the world preaching the Gospel were fulfilled to the letter, even beyond what might have been expected over the two thousand years the Church has been on Earth. It was fulfilled in a spectacular way, even though the Lord was giving that commission to an insignificant group of men and women who did not seem to have much promise.

We said in our study that what made the difference and enabled those men and women to carry out the Lord’s commission was precisely the impartation of the Holy Spirit. Where do we see that impartation of the Holy Spirit upon the Church and upon the people to whom the Lord gave these instructions? We all know.

The Book of Acts, chapter 2: on the day of Pentecost, 50 days after the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, these disciples—the Lord has already ascended to heaven, and now they are here all by themselves, in a manner of speaking. They are no longer those children whom the Lord fed in person; they are not even adolescents anymore. They have entered responsible adulthood. Now they are on Earth; now they are the Church of Jesus Christ. Now the Lord has gone far away, as we see in the parable of the Lord Jesus Christ. He has gone to a distant country, heaven, and is up there seated at the right hand of God the Father, and it is time for them to begin working on their own, as adults in the world, carrying out the commission and the tasks the Lord has assigned them.

How are they going to do it? The Lord had already told them they would receive power, and they did what they had to do. They gathered in that upper place, that upper room described in the Book of Acts, chapter 2. They stayed there praying with one spirit and one purpose, united, resolved, determined not to leave until the Lord’s promise was fulfilled.

And the Bible says that at a certain point, God did what He had to do. In chapter 2 of the Book of Acts it says: “When the day of Pentecost came.” It is interesting that the Day of Pentecost was, in the Old Testament, a Jewish harvest festival in which the firstfruits of the grain harvest were presented to God. You can read about that, for example, in Leviticus 23:17.

How interesting that this day, when the Jewish people celebrated the firstfruits of the harvest, those new fruits of the harvest brought to the temple as a sign of gratitude and acknowledgment that the harvest was on its way, is the very day God chose to pour out the Holy Spirit.

Here we see something: many of these rites, festivals, and events that we see in the Old Testament are a prefiguration of things that would come later. Passover and the Passover Lamb, for example, pointed toward the coming ministry of the Lamb of God.

Here we see that the feast of Pentecost, or of firstfruits, was a feast that pointed toward this moment when this group, this core of believers, would receive the firstfruits on that day; that is, this is where the beginning of the life of the Church is marked. Here we see the beginning, the first harvest of the Church of Jesus Christ through the coming of the Holy Spirit.

So at that feast of Pentecost, that feast of firstfruits described in Leviticus chapter 23, it says: “They were all together, and suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, which filled the whole house where they were sitting, and divided tongues of fire appeared to them, resting on each one of them, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.” There we have the beautiful and foundational description of that first great visitation of the Holy Spirit.

Just as John had described it, as the Lord had described it, that breaking forth, that explosion, that beginning of the ministry of the Holy Spirit was marked by fire, marked by miraculous sounds, marked by a supernatural endowment of the ability to speak in other tongues. Incidentally, the tongues the disciples received were not mysterious, incomprehensible angelic tongues. Interestingly, they were national languages, recognizable tongues, human languages that could be recognized by all those Jews who, on the Day of Pentecost and at that feast of Pentecost, came from all parts of the diaspora, that is, from the places of exile where Jews were living throughout the Earth. They traveled to Jerusalem to celebrate that particular feast as an act of devotion.

So, interestingly, God chose the Day of Pentecost strategically. It was a day that expressed those firstfruits, the beginning of the life of the Church, the Church’s harvest. It was a day when Jews from many different countries were in Jerusalem, all speaking the various languages of the countries where they traded and worked, where perhaps they had even been born, though they were Jews. They came to Jerusalem, and suddenly, in that small city, these men and women began to speak different languages that the Lord enabled them to speak, without having had any instruction.

Here we see that “the crowd gathered.” It says that “in Jerusalem, Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven, when they heard that sound”—because the sound was like a summons from God: Come, because something is happening in this place—so people came from around the city, people from different countries. And they heard them, it says, and were astonished and amazed, saying: “Look, aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? How, then, do we hear them speaking in each of the languages into which we were born? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and those of us who live in Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, etc., and Romans residing here, both Jews and proselytes, were all astonished and perplexed, saying to one another: What does this mean?” Right? The Book of Acts, chapter 2, verses 6 onward.

Interestingly, God chose that moment when different nations were present in Jerusalem, represented by these devout Jews and converts to Judaism as well. God chose that strategic moment and brought about this mighty sound to announce that something new was happening in the world: the beginning, the firstfruits of the life of the Church and of its evangelizing work through the power of the Holy Spirit. These men and women were filled with the Spirit, began to manifest the signs Christ suggested in Mark chapter 16, and something different began here.

Interestingly, in that manifestation of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, the Lord is also saying something very important: the Gospel is for all nations. The Gospel is international, worldwide. The Gospel is not only for the Jews; the Gospel is for everyone who believes, those who are far away and those who are near. The Gospel is to spread through all nations.

I imagine that many of the people who saw that supernatural manifestation of God through the sound, through the tongues of fire, through these people speaking languages they had never studied—many of those people came to the Lord. And what happened? Afterward, they returned to the different countries they came from to continue their normal, everyday lives, and they took the Gospel with them, and they too began to proclaim the Word of God.

How strategic God is, and how we see that He chose this moment to bring together a series of factors here that were emblematic of the Church’s ministry on Earth: a ministry of power, a supernatural ministry, a ministry of humble people who opened themselves to the power of God, and that was all that was needed. A ministry of people who, upon receiving the Gospel, would then take it to their different nations and continue to be witnesses of the Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God, the Savior of humanity. A wonderful example here, isn’t it?

The last thing we could say is that, when the Holy Spirit came upon them here, God chose some very powerful and resounding ways to manifest the coming of the Holy Spirit because this was the inauguration, the beginning, the initial breaking forth. And although many of these characteristics would appear later in the lives of believers, it did not necessarily have to happen that same way every time. That is, tongues of fire do not have to appear over people’s heads every time the Holy Spirit manifests Himself, nor do people necessarily have to speak in a recognizable human language.

What is more, I would say personally—and this is what I personally believe; you may believe something else if you wish—I do not even believe that the baptism of the Holy Spirit must necessarily be marked by tongues; that can come later. It can be marked by other things, but not necessarily by tongues. This was seen at that moment because that was how it happened and, in fact, tongues do accompany the movement of the Holy Spirit on many occasions, but that does not have to be the only way God manifests Himself.

But we will talk a little more about that; do not worry if I have left you wondering about it—I want to clarify it later as well. A wonderful passage, and I hope it will be a blessing and an inspiration for your life. God bless you. I bid you farewell in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Farewell, until next time.