Printer Friendly VersionOn 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!
