June 26, 2005

A Rushing Mighty Wind

Acts 2:1-12

On the day of Pentecost, the Lord once again filled His temple. Not a temple made of wood, hay, or stubble. But this time a living temple (1 Peter 2:4-5).

A major change was happening among the people of God, but they needed some confirmation concerning this change. How else would they know this change was of God? Their traditions were too ingrained; their historic temple in Jerusalem too huge. In Jerusalem, on the Day of Pentecost, that change took place. The locus of the Holy Spirit was no longer associated with places, but with people—the people of God.
1 Corinthians 3:16-17 tells us: “Don't you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple” (NIV). In times past, the Holy Spirit had been given to individuals but never to the collective. Consider the occasion of Saul, King of Israel, being rejected by God and the transfer of authority to David the newly appointed and anointed King of Israel: “So Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed [David] in the presence of his brothers, and from that day on the Spirit of the LORD came upon David in power. Samuel then went to Ramah. Now the Spirit of the LORD had departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD tormented him” (I Samuel 16:13-14, NIV).

This was an occasion of the infilling of the Holy Spirit, but only for one person. A case could be made that it was for one person at a time, but that might be stretching the text too far. However, at Pentecost something different and new is happening. The Holy Spirit is being poured out upon all believers. As each of those in attendance in that upper room could attest, “Look, the Holy Spirit is upon you! And you . . . and even you!” This was new. It was amazing, and it was reenacted each time a people group came to believe throughout the book of Acts.

In Acts 8 the nationalistic and ethnocentric apostles received confirmation that even the Samaritans have become followers of and believers in Jesus. These Samaritans receive the same signs at the infilling of the Holy Spirit. This was unprecedented, as the Jews had always held such a low opinion of Samaritans (Acts 8:14-17). In Acts 10 the exceedingly ethnocentric Peter is given clear assurance that even the much despised Gentiles have now received the Holy Spirit by these same accompanying signs (Acts 10:44-46). In Acts 19 Paul finds “believers” in Ephesus who have never even heard of the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Those who weren’t present on the day of Pentecost would not be left out. They too received the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the accompanying signs (Acts 19:1-7). These inaugural outpourings were proof positive that Peter’s proclamation of the age of the Spirit was true: “God’s gift is for every nation, every tongue, and every tribe of man” (Acts 10:34-35).

The symbol of tongues becomes a wonderful confirmation that one need not speak Hebrew, Aramaic, or even Greek to have a personal encounter with the one True and Living God. He transcends all divisions of humanity. This was confirmed in each of these Pentecost moments: Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and even to the Gentiles, also known as the ends of the earth.

Fire, that purifying symbol of the Spirit of God, present at each of the former sites where God would make His presence known (tents, tabernacles, and temples), was now purifying the hearts of believers (Acts 2:3). Fire is symbolic proof of God’s continuing desire to live among all who would be His people.

But what of this sound like a blowing violent wind? The Greek language actually presents a less violent image for us than the English: “Suddenly there came forth a sound like that of a strong wind.” We must take careful notice that no actual wind was present. It was something that reminded them of wind. It was a difficult sound to describe. But God has often spoken out of this very same sound (Job 38:1). There can be little doubt that those who knew the history of Israel, those who knew the stories of the Lord’s work among them, would recognize these signs as the work of the Lord that day, too.

But what of this sound like a wind? Consider the absolute confirmation of the Lord this would have brought to them.

Exodus 3 recounts the occasion of Moses’ dialogue with God concerning setting the captives free from Egypt. Moses asked God, “Whom shall I say sent me?” God answers with one of the most cryptic replies in all of Scripture. We call this reply of God concerning His name the tetragrammaton: YHWH. In our Bibles we frequently see the word LORD written in all capital letters. This is the English for the Hebrew word “Adonai.” Adonai is merely a substitute word for the translation of the tetragrammaton, or “YHWH,” sometimes spoken as “Yahweh.”

However, the Jews would never say “Yahweh.” They considered God’s name to be too lofty and too holy to utter. Rather, they would use four Hebrew letters: YHWH. Along the course of history, these letters came to be thought of as representing the imperfect future tense of the Hebrew verb “to be.” That’s the reason our English translations of the Bible read: “When Moses asked God, ‘Who shall I say sent me?’ God’s response was, ‘I am that I am.’” Or “I will be whom I will be.”

However, no one really knows when that tradition began. Suffice to say that academic Judaism considers this name of God to mean something entirely different. One example really demonstrates this point. In 1 Kings 18, there is an accounting of the life of the prophet Elijah. One of the events of Elijah’s life brought him into an encounter with Ahab, king of Israel. God always raised up one prophet in an effort to keep the kings of Israel and Judah on track spiritually. Ahab, however, was a particularly bad king, with an even worse wife named Jezebel. They set out to kill all of God’s prophets. They didn’t like being reminded of God, and what’s worse, they got caught up in the worship of a false god named Ba’al.

Elijah challenged Ahab and all of the prophets of Ba’al to a showdown one day. The two camps each prepared a sacrifice to their god, but were instructed not to set fire to the sacrifice. Elijah’s challenge was that once the sacrifices were prepared, they would each call down fire from their god to consume the sacrifice, and whichever god answered by fire would then be known as the true God. I Kings 18:21: “Elijah went before the people and said, ‘How long will you waver between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Ba’al is God, follow him” (NIV). Let’s read that verse the way Elijah would have actually said it: If YHWH is God, follow him; but if Ba’al is god, follow him.

The priests of Ba’al called down fire all day and into the night. Elijah taunted them and encouraged them to get all worked up into a frenzy! “Do it again,” he cried out to them, “Do it again!” But of course, no fire ever came. Finally, Elijah prayed and asked YHWH to answer by fire, and the fire consumed the sacrifice, the altar, and even the water he had poured on the sacrifice. So that they could know that YHWH is GOD!!!

Listen to the response of the people of Israel: “When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, “The LORD—he is God! The LORD—he is God!” (I Kings 18:39, NIV). Following this occasion there was absolutely no doubt as to who the One, True, and Living God was. It was YHWH.

One of the reasons for the whole concept of this name, “Yahweh,” is because when God spoke His name to Moses, it sounded to Moses like the breath of God. Those Hebrew letters, YHWH, when coupled with the appropriate vowel points, approximate the sound of whole-hearted breathing. In both Hebrew and Greek, the word for spirit is the same as the word for breath. Our God is so in all, so in everything, that His name is on our lips even as we breathe. In fact, the very first thing we do when we live on God’s earth is “draw our first breath,” and the very last thing we do is to “draw our last breath.” Therefore the name of the Lord is always being uttered—even from the mouths of those who disavow Him.

When the Apostle Paul challenged the Athenians about their concept of the unknown god, he used this very concept, saying, “For in [this unknown god] we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). Paul is reiterating that our lives are being conducted in God!

On the Day of Pentecost, every sign accompanying the moment was a confirmation that with this event something new was occurring. God was now infilling His temple. It was not a temple made by human hands, for that would be far inferior to the temple He made when He first breathed the breath of life into Adam. That temple had been destroyed by sin, but painstakingly, God began the process of rebuilding. Through wilderness wanderings, national birth pangs, fearless leaders, judges, prophets, and even kings, God strategically laid every brick, until the day He laid in Zion the Chief Cornerstone of the temple He was rebuilding.

Once again, a new wind was blowing into the living temple called the Church.

Breathe on us breath of God!