Printer Friendly VersionI. Calling All Priests
1. Perhaps the only time we find our disciple friends together
on something is this occasion. (You should underline these words.) When the
Day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Most of the time
they just couldn’t seem to get it together.
They were a group of twelve guys who never seemed to trust the
motives of the others; a group of guys always conniving for the places of
power and prestige among each other; a group of guys frequently in trouble
with Jesus.
They doubted Him; stole from the community moneybag; resented
having to serve each other; struggled with ego and pride; and these were the
guys to whom Jesus was leaving the work of His Church! On the day Jesus died
on the cross, His group seemed to die right there with Him. But on the Day
of Pentecost they were all together! And suddenly, Jesus blew the breath of
new life into them! It was the fulfillment of ancient prophecy. It would mark
a brand new thing the Lord was doing.
Through the prophet Malachi, God had said, “‘See,
I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly
the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant,
whom you desire, will come,’ says the LORD Almighty” (Malachi 3:1,
NIV).
Not only had Malachi foretold of the day God would do this,
but so had many others. Much later, the Apostle Peter would reflect back on
these things and tell Christian believers that they were now the new priests
of God’s Kingdom: “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood,
a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises
of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light” (I Peter
2:9, NIV).
The Apostle Paul would also remind the people that not only
were they the priests, they were also the Temple. Ephesians 2:19-22: “Consequently,
you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people
and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and
prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole
building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord.
And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which
God lives by his Spirit” (NIV). But until Pentecost the Holy Spirit was
not dwelling in them. Up until Pentecost they were not a temple, they were
not priests, they were having little impact in their world, and they weren’t
building the Church Jesus had told them they would be.
But then, suddenly, He came. In wind and fire! So there would
be no mistaking His presence for something else!
Here’s a question: What does one do in a temple? Make sacrifices!
Who gets to make the sacrifices? Read your Bibles carefully . . . the priests!
Who are the priests? YOU!
This is right where God had started with Israel: “Now if you obey me
fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations YOU will be my treasured
possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom
of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:5-6, NIV).
It’s right where He picks up at Pentecost: “But YOU
are a . . . royal priesthood” (I Peter 2:9, NIV). Pentecost marks the
day when God launched a whole new kingdom of priests!
II. Happy Birthday, Church!
1. Pentecost also marks the birth of the Church, and that’s
the name we’ve given to this new kingdom of priests: the Church.
Luke’s Gospel and the book of the Acts of the Apostles
are a set; a prequel and a sequel. Written by Dr. Luke, who sought to instruct
his friend, whom he identifies as Theophilus, about all the things Jesus did
while He lived on earth, and all that Jesus continued to do through the Church
once He had poured out His Spirit on them.
Luke 1:1-4: “Many have undertaken to draw up an account
of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed
down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the
word. Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from
the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you,
most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things
you have been taught” (NIV).
Acts 1:1-2: “In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about
all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven,
after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen”
(NIV).
2. Luke begins his Gospel with two birth narratives: those of
John the Baptist and Jesus. He begins Acts with yet another birth narrative:
the birth of the Church. What is absolutely amazing is that these books were
written in an era when no one cared anything about marking births. But Luke
cared and he’s showing us that through His Church, Jesus means to carry
on all that He did in the flesh. At Pentecost the Church is born!
3. God had called the nation of Israel to be for Him a kingdom
of priests. He now calls upon His Church. YOU . . . You, Church, are that
royal priesthood, that holy nation, that people belonging to God!
Whenever Israel failed to be the kingdom of priests God had
called them to be, it was usually because there wasn’t much communication
happening. At one point, when the Lord’s presence had been long gone
from the temple of Israel, God called Ezekiel and told him of all the detestable
practices of the Israelite priests. Those priests served in the temple every
day, and yet they never even noticed that the Spirit of the Lord had departed
(see Ezekiel 8-12). But the Lord desired to pour out His Spirit on His people.
The Lord always wants to live among His people, just as He had
with Adam and Eve before the Fall. Someday the people will move back and “remove
all the vile images and detestable idols. Then I will give them an undivided
heart and put a new Spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of
stone and give them a heart of flesh. Then they will follow my decrees and
be careful to keep my laws. They will be my people, and I will be their God!”
(Ezekiel 11:19-20, NIV). That day finally comes on Pentecost!
To the Church, Peter writes, “Once you were not a people,
but now you are the people of God!” (I Peter 2:10, NIV). This is what
Pentecost does for us! It gives us the opportunity for a new life in the Spirit.
It draws us back to the Lord to be His people.
III. The Duty of Priests
1. As believers, we are called to be this community of priests.
This does not mean that God needs us to stand in the temple and perform ritual
sacrifices of animals. Rather, He desires that we stand before Him on behalf
of the people, and stand before the people on behalf of Him. That’s what
the priests of His kingdom do! They work at reconciliation between God and
humanity.
Paul would eventually write it this way: “Therefore, if
anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave
us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself
in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us
the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though
God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf:
Be reconciled to God” (II Corinthians 5:17-20, NIV).
2. Amazingly, on the Day of Pentecost, the disciples just knew
what to do and what to say. They had not rehearsed any speeches. Peter had
not been to any seminary classes; he knew nothing of homiletics or hermeneutics.
They just operated out of the power of the Holy Spirit in their lives.
Acts 2:14-17: “Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised
his voice, and addressed the crowd: “Fellow Jews and all of you who live
in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say.
These men are not drunk, as you suppose. It's only nine in the morning! No,
this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: “‘In the last days,’
God says, ‘I will pour out my Spirit on all people’” (NIV).
Peter knew what the Lord had told him to wait for and what to
look for. He was to wait in the city until he had been clothed with power
from on high. When the Lord made His presence known, Peter knew that he’d
been plugged into 220 volts, or perhaps 440! Notice also, that even though
his message was harsh, it carried with it the love of God. Though the people
were guilty before the Lord, and regardless of what they may have sought to
do with Jesus in their sinful disposition, God had raised Him up as both Lord
and Christ!
Notice the response of the people: it was not one of bitterness
or anger and no one tried to defend their position. Rather, they only sought
to know what they could do about their predicament. Acts 2:37: “When
the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the
other apostles, ‘Brothers, what shall we do?’” (NIV).
3. Repentance marks the occasion. In crucifying Jesus, they
had done the only thing they could do: they succumbed to their sinful nature.
They knew that wasn’t going to solve their problems now because the Holy
Spirit was making that plain to them. So, Peter called out to them, “What
can you do?!!?? Repent and be baptized . . . and as followers of Jesus, and
you’ll also receive this gift of the Holy Spirit!”
Peter has witnessed the work of God in his life and through
his life from the moment of Pentecost forward. On that day, there were Jews
from every nation staying in Jerusalem. Everyone noticed these things that
were happening. Peter’s use of language included Aramaic and Greek. Greek
was the language of the world, and Aramaic was the language among the local
Jews. The disciples were all Galileans, but these people who had come to Jerusalem
for the festivities were all hearing this new message in their own native
languages.
Luke records for us that there were Parthians, Medes, Elamites,
residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phyrgia, Pamphialia,
Egypt, and the parts of Libya near Cyrene. There were visitors from Rome as
well as Cretans and Arabs! What does all of this mean? This is God’s
way of saying, “What we’ve been having here is a failure to communicate!”
Since Genesis 11, when the people began to seek God in their
own ways, instead of His way, and they began to build that tower, we have
struggled with a failure to communicate ever since. Genesis 11:5-9: “But
the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building.
The LORD said, ‘If as one people speaking the same language they have
begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.
Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand
each other.’ So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth,
and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel—because
there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD
scattered them over the face of the whole earth” (NIV).
Since Babel, we’ve become ethnocentric and suspicious of
everyone who is not like us. But God wants to unite us all together again,
in Him, where there is neither Jew nor Greek, Scythian or Barbarian, but all
are one in the Lord! Colossians 3:11: “Here there is no Greek or Jew,
circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ
is all, and is in all” (NIV).
If you know your Biblical history, beginning at the very moment
God destroyed the tower, He began to call forth Israel. First through Abraham,
then Isaac, then Jacob . . . down through the twelve tribes of Israel to Jesus
. . . through His twelve disciples to the Church . . . to YOU!
What was destroyed at Babel—the ability to communicate—is
now restored at Pentecost! I imagine God saying something like, “Can
you hear Me now?” What will be the result of each of us speaking out
now? What will be the result of us standing for God before the people? What
will be the result of us standing before the people for God? Peter gave the
answer to those questions on the Day of Pentecost: “And everyone who
calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Acts 2:21, NIV).
Don’t know what to say? Relax . . . the Lord will teach
you! His Holy Spirit will be alive in you. Jesus said, “All this I have
spoken while still with you. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the
Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you
of everything I have said to you” (John 14:25, NIV). There is no limit
to what God can do, except the limits we put there by our resistance to all
He wants to do in us and through us.
Every time the disciples doubted that people who weren’t
just like them—who didn’t talk like them, eat the foods they ate,
speak their languages, or laugh at their jokes—every time they doubted
that these people could hear and respond to the Gospel of Jesus, He poured
out His Spirit on them. And it looked just like it did when He poured out
His Spirit on the disciples, so there could be no mistake! Acts 8:14-17: “When
the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the Word of God,
they sent Peter and John to them. When they arrived, they prayed for them
that they might receive the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit had not yet
come upon any of them; they had simply been baptized into the name of the
Lord Jesus. Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received
the Holy Spirit” (NIV).
Acts 19:1-6: “While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul took the
road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus. There he found some disciples
and asked them, ‘Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?’
They answered, ‘No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.’
So Paul asked, ‘Then what baptism did you receive?’ ‘John’s
baptism,’ they replied. Paul said, ‘John’s baptism was a baptism
of repentance. He told the people to believe in the one coming after him,
that is, in Jesus.’ On hearing this, they were baptized into the name
of the Lord Jesus. When Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came
on them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied” (NIV).
Each time they doubted, Jesus poured out His Spirit. It’s
as though God was saying to them, “Can you hear Me now?” And the
disciples were thinking: “Wow! This is just like it was for us!”
Let me tell you how all of this will someday end. The Apostle
John, in the book of the Revelation writes: “After this I looked and
there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every
nation, tribe, people, and language, standing before the throne and in front
of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches
in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: ‘Salvation belongs
to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb’” (Revelation
7:9-10, NIV).
Think of that. Just like us, others want to know God’s
love! Just like us, others want to be His people, and He their God. Just like
us, they want to know forgiveness. And the good news is that just like us
they can because of Pentecost.
Perhaps the greatest miracle of Pentecost was that the disciples were finally together as the people of God, speaking the same language. What language? The Gospel of Jesus Christ. And nothing is impossible for them . . . nor for us! Amen!
