Lesson 32
What Pentecost Was – Lev. 23:9-21
We want to understand that we’re still in the section of Deuteronomy
that deals with how to love the Lord your God with all your soul, or with the
details of life. Every person is
surrounded by details of living, no matter who you are or what your background
is. You have the problem of fellowship
with other believers, you have your relationship with loved ones, you have the
sex problem, you have money, jobs, recreation, health, you have your
relationship to government and those in authority, you have friends, etc. you
are surrounded by details of life. This
section of Deuteronomy, chapters 12-26, deal very practically how in the Old
Testament God instructed His people how to love Him, to show their love for Him
in these various details of life. This
is why we get into specifics in the Old Testament.
In particular this section, chapters 12-16, deals with the principle of
unity. Remember that the book of
Deuteronomy would closely approximate our constitution. The book of Deuteronomy is a constitution of
a nation and therefore as a constitution of a national entity it served certain
functions. One of these functions was to
outline the dynamics of society. The
dynamics of society proceed this way.
First in chapters 12-16 you have stress on something that unifies the
nation. The nation has to have some
unity. Notice this is the first goal,
not after righteousness, the first goal is unity. If you don’t have that you can have all the
law and order you want to and you’re not going to go anywhere. The unity of the nation
Then the second section of Deuteronomy, chapters 17-21 deal with
righteousness, or law and order. I want
you to notice something, law and order is first built upon national unity. Law and order, lesson and application, will
not produce unity. Unity has to be
produced before law and order because unity means that your unified in what you
want your laws to be. That’s why we’re
having such a terrible time in our country.
We have lost the Christian consensus.
Since about 1930 there’s been a radical transformation in our society so
the
Then you come to rights or freedom in the book of Deuteronomy, chapters
23-25 and the last section, chapter 26 deals with the problem of…for lack of
any other word I’ll call citizen’s spirit, how the citizens express their
patriotism is given in chapter 26. So
basically is the outline of this section of Deuteronomy. And it’s important to see the sequence, how
it follows. You can begin to see why
patriotism, law and order, and many things that people are crying for in our
day are results of and not causes. They
are results from a previous unity.
We are working with chapter 16, and one of unifying elements was the
national calendar. The national calendar
of Israel was very unique in history because there was no other nation in the
history of mankind that has ever had a calendar quite like this one, for this
calendar gave special holidays throughout the year that were not only holidays
but were prophecies of things to come.
So that in the course of one year, if you celebrated all of the holidays
you would find yourself actually celebrating and repeating the destiny of the
nation. So that, for example, we would
start off with the Feast of Passover, on the 14th of Nisan or Abib,
this would correspond to March or April on our calendar today. Passover had a function that we saw last
time. The basis for Passover, and it was
closely linked to a second feast, was what happened to Israel as a captive
nation in Egypt. Israel was a captive
nation and was liberated. The word
“Passover” comes from pesach and it
means the angel of death passed over every house that had blood on the
door. God said to the nation I am going
to judge, I am going to kill the firstborn of this nation and the only house
that will not have death, that will not have death, will be those houses that
have the blood applied to the door.
Notice something, this is salvation by faith and grace because you
notice God didn’t say I’m going to save all the good citizens, He didn’t say
that at all. He didn’t say Joe Blow down
the street is a fine solid citizen and I like him so much, he’s given so much
to the United Fund of Egypt and he’s done this and that and the other thing,
now these may be good things but don’t lose the perspective. They are not things that save; they are good
works, yes, but not things that save.
What saved the people in that day was what the modern people would term
very gruesome and that was they had to kill a lamb and take the blood and apply
it to the door. And this was the historical
base of the Passover feast.
After the Passover they had something else called the Feast of
Unleavened Bread in which for seven days they had to eat food that was not
leaven. This nation had to eat this
horrible, flat, lousy bread. That was
the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and that looked like this. First you have the 14th, the 15th,
the 16th, the 17th, the 18th, 19th,
20th, and 21st of the month. You have eight days. The 14th day is Passover. The lamb was slaughtered in the evening and
the blood applied, and the 15th became a Sabbath. The 21st was a Sabbath. Please notice these Sabbaths are not a day of
the week, they are a day of the month, and you do not have to be a student of
advanced mathematics to realize that these Sabbaths, the 15th and
the 21st did not always come on a Saturday. That was the regular
weekly Sabbath, but these Sabbaths were days of the month and therefore fell on
different days of the week. Therefore,
when we come to the Feast of Unleavened Bread we are coming to a seven day
period running from the 15th to the 21st.
What is the basis of the Feast of Unleavened Bread; what does it
picture? The Feast of Unleavened Bread simply means separation for in those
days the leaven was a sign of continuity. When a girl married and made a home,
she would take some leaven from her home and there would be a continuity
between the households of leaven. And
when a person moved from one area to the next they would carry leaven with them
so that they could use it in their food. But during these seven days they were
not allowed to use leaven, signifying the fact that as they moved from Egypt
they totally left the whole system behind.
It was a complete 100% break with Egypt.
So the Feast of Unleavened Bread has as its theme song the doctrine of
separation, absolute total separation.
That was the second holiday and it wasn’t one day, it was a whole week
of feasts. Now let’s look at something.
These are two feasts in the national calendar. They not only were feasts
celebrating a past event but they looked forward to a future event. What future event? We learned of the Passover as fulfilled in
Jesus Christ. Finally we come down to
the days of the New Testament and we find Jesus of Nazareth crucified on what
day? Passover! And so on the very day in 30 AD or 33 AD,
whichever year, depending on the chronology you follow, whatever it was, on the
night of the 14th of that particular year Jesus Christ died that
afternoon. You might say it’s irony; I
would say it’s divine sovereignty. God,
in His plan, so worked it out that when Jesus was crucified He was crucified
the same hour that the Jews were slaughtering their lambs for the Passover. So you have the fact that in the New
Testament, in 1 Cor. 5 Paul recognizes that Jesus Christ is our Passover.
Therefore the New Testament announces that Jesus Christ’s death on the cross
fulfilled this feast. So the feast looks
back and it looked forward.
Now let’s see what unleavened bread was.
Unleavened bread looked back to separation. What is fulfilled in history that can fill
out the unleavened bread? Again we find
1 Cor. 5 and the idea is that God has provided a complete break with the world
system. God has provided a way of life
for the person today that is independent of the world. It’s very ironic; we think the student rebels
are the ones who are in rebellion against the establishment. I always like to challenge people because
basically the student revolutionary of today is not a radical at all; in fact,
he’s on the same base intellectually with the rest of the world. You can take an unbeliever, and I don’t care
whether he’s a conservative or a liberal, he is operating on the same set of
presuppositions as the most radical student.
There is only one true type of radical today in the world and that is a
Biblical Christian because a Biblical Christian believers in a Creator and a
creation, and salvation only by grace. So the Christian is operating on a set
of supernatural presuppositions, the unbeliever a set of naturalistic
ones. Therefore we have the unleavened
bread fulfilled as separation from the world system, accomplished through the
cross of Jesus Christ. Paul, in 1 Cor. 5
develops this.
Now we come to an important point to distinguish between at this time,
before we get to Pentecost and that is the third feast on the calendar. Let’s look at these feasts again: Passover
occurred in the springtime. Unleavened
bread occurred in the springtime. When
was the next feast? Pentecost; when did Pentecost occur? In the
springtime. Then there was a break and
they had no holidays again, they went through the summer without any holidays
and came down to what is our month of September/October and they had a set of
three holidays here. These three were:
first, they had the Feast of Trumpets in which great trumpets were blown
throughout the land. Then they had the
second one, the Day of Atonement, and then the third one, the Feast of
Tabernacles. That was the calendar and they
had one more feast in here, the Feast of Firstfruits. They had seven feasts. You have four in the spring, three in the
fall. Look at those feasts
carefully. Were the first four fulfilled
literally? Yes they were. I will show you how Pentecost was fulfilled
tonight. Passover was it fulfilled
exactly in history as that lamb, that dying lamb that had been slain down
through the centuries, was fulfilled when God’s lamb died on the cross on the
very same day.
The Feast of Unleavened Bread was fulfilled, the Feast of Firstfruits
was fulfilled, and the Feast of Pentecost was fulfilled. And that is all the feasts that have been
fulfilled, so we yet have three feasts on Israel’s calendar that have not yet
been fulfilled. How will they be
fulfilled? In the same way the first
four were fulfilled—literally, except the fulfillment has not yet come. We’ll
deal with these fulfillments as we go on. The point here to make is that you
have one calendar depicting God’s plan for the nation, and notice it’s not God’s
plan for the Church.
Make this careful distinction: Israel of the Old Testament is not the
Church, don’t ever confuse those two or you’ll have someone saying I’m saved
because I believe in the Ten Commandments or I’m saved because I keep the
golden rule or I’m saved because I do this or I do that. That’s a lot of nonsense because Israel is a
physical entity; the Church is a spiritual entity made up of people who have
trusted in Christ. For example,
Israel—made up of Jews only plus a few proselytes. You have the Church made up of Jews and
Gentiles and that is what the Church is, it is a union of Jews and
Gentiles. That’s news to a lot of people
because a lot of people in our day think there are only two kinds of people,
either Jews or Christians, and if you’re not a Jew you’re a Christian and
that’s a lot of nonsense. There are
three categories of humanity: Jews, Christians and Gentiles. Gentiles are non-Jewish people who have never
received Jesus Christ as Savior.
Therefore we have three categories of humanity, two of whom, those who
have been born again, who have trusted in Jesus Christ as Savior, whether they
be Jew or Gentiles are now called Christians.
Some of you don’t believe Jews are being saved today but they are; in
fact, there’s a higher percentage of Jewish people that believe that Jesus was
the Messiah than Gentile people, and that can be proved easily by referring to
some simple population statistics.
Therefore we have Jews and Gentiles today who have believed in Jesus Christ;
these make up the Church. Notice, the
Church has no national identity; Israel was a nation, the Church is not a
nation, the Church dwells in many nations and that is why the Church is a one
only bona fide international organism
of people. No other international
organism, including the United Nations, is authorized in God’s Word. So we have Israel and we have the Church, two
entities but never mix the two. These
feasts we’re talking about deal with Israel, not the Church. It turns out in history we benefit from
Israel’s feasts, we benefit because God fulfills His program to Israel, but the
reason we benefit is because God has fulfilled His promises to Israel. He didn’t make any promises to us, He made
all His promises to Israel, plus some general ones to the Gentiles and it’s
because of His fulfillment with the Jewish program that He now has been able to
bless us.
Now in Deut. 16:9 we come to the fourth feast and this is the Feast of
Pentecost; this is the feast we want to work with tonight. It’s going to be hard and it’s going to
demand concentration because this is a very difficult, the most difficult of
all the feasts, to communicate and to understand. Verse 9, “Seven weeks shalt thou number unto
thee: begin to number the seven weeks from such time as you begin to put the
sickle to the grain.” One correction for
those of you with King James Bibles. It
was written by Englishmen and there are no poorer people in the American
English language than an Englishman; they never can understand what we’re
talking about. Of course, we never can
understand what they’re talking about.
But an Englishman when he’s talking about corn means grain or wheat; he
doesn’t mean what we call corn. To him
that’s called maize. This is talking
about wheat or grain, just put grain, that’s the best word to describe it.
Therefore it’s very clearly indicated that the beginning of the time period,
and by the way, do you know what the word “Pentecost” means? It’s simply the Greek for the word
“fifty.” Pente is the word “five” and the Pentecost in the Greek is the word fifty.
In verse 9, “Seven weeks shalt thou number unto thee: begin to number
seven weeks” or fifty days. This is why
we have Pentecost. We have Pentecost labeled as such because the original
Bible, written in Hebrew was translated into Greek and you have the Septuagint,
the LXX, designated for the seventy translators who translated it. So you have a Greek translation of the Old
Testament and this is the Septuagint and this is where we get the word “Pentecost”
from. This is how we got the word. In verse 9 you have to understand that it is
a time reckoning that is the key to this feast.
It has to be reckoned on a strict time scale. It has to reckon from here to here separated
by exactly seven weeks. If we are to
find what day Pentecost is to fall on, we’ve got to find out what day is it
reckoned from. And it says in verse 7,
“Seven weeks shalt thou number… begin to number seven weeks from the time that
you begin to put the sickle to the grain.”
Therefore, this point is the point at which they began to harvest the
grain. When was the time they began to harvest the grain.
Turn to Lev. 23:9, “And the LORD spoke unto Moses, saying, [10] “Speak
unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye are come into the land
which I give unto you, and shall reap the harvest thereof,” see, these feasts
are not going to begin until Israel gets into the land and begins to
produce, “then ye shall bring a sheaf of
the first fruits,” there is where they begin the harvest, verse 10. They begin the harvest at what is known as
first fruits. This is a word for the
beginning of the harvest and first fruits is the time indicator that begins to
set off the time reckoning period.
Verse 11, “And he shall wave the sheaf before the LORD, to be accepted
for you: on the morrow after the sabbath the priest shall wave it.” Now here’s where everybody gets in a
hullabaloo on this question. The question
is what is the Sabbath in verse 11? In
the context here they just got through talking about Passover and Unleavened
Bread and we’ve got this situation, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, and 21. What’s happened in just a few verses previous
in Lev. 23 you’ve got a Sabbath there, you’ve got a Sabbath here. In addition to those Sabbaths you’ve got a
weekly Sabbath, because these are days of the month, so somewhere in here you
have another Sabbath. Say it’s the 17th,
just suppose that year it turned out that the 17th was the Saturday
of the week. So we have Passover on the
14th, which was a Wednesday that year, the 15th was a
Thursday, the 16th was a Friday, the 17th was a Saturday,
a weekly Sabbath, so that week Thursday was a Sabbath, Saturday was a Sabbath,
and the next Wednesday was a Sabbath.
This ought to tell you something. Don’t buy this line that Jesus was
crucified on Good Friday. Jesus was
crucified on Good Wednesday because He was three days and three nights in the
grave. People say how could that
be? It’s very simple if you know the Old
Testament Law because the next day after the Passover always had to be a
Sabbath. It’s not proof that it was
Friday that Jesus was crucified because they said we’ve got to get His body off
the cross because tomorrow is the Sabbath. That’s no proof that it was a
Saturday. We know from the Old Testament
that the 15th that followed the Passover ALWAYS was a Sabbath,
regardless of what day of the week it was.
So therefore Jesus obviously could have been easily in the grave three
days and three literal nights if He was crucified Wednesday afternoon, He was
Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in the grave and rose on Sunday.
This is very significant because if you look in verse 11, which is
talking about the next feast, the Feast of Firstfruits, this is when the sickle
is laid to the harvest, there was a short ceremony in which they had
ceremonially cut that first sheaf of wheat or grain and they brought the grain
to the priest. So they bring this grain
to the priest and he would offer it before the Lord as a thanksgiving, the
fact that God had given them this harvest.
When did he do this? Verse 11
says he did it on the day after the Sabbath.
What Sabbath? Is it this Sabbath,
this Sabbath or this Sabbath? Is it the
15th, the 17th, or the 21st in this
example? We can deduce that it’s the 17th
in this, the weekly Sabbath. So the
Firstfruits occurred always on a Sunday.
You say wait a minute, how can you be sure that the harvest would be
ready sometime in this week. We went
through that last time, Jer. 5; God was so able to manipulate the climate that
the harvest would always be ready during this time period. So this is one of the elements of theocracy
in history. So you have then the
Saturday Sabbath, the 17th, and on the Sunday the first fruits were
offered. This is why, in the New
Testament, Jesus is declared in 1 Cor. 15:20 to be the first fruits. What does
it mean? It means that Jesus rose from
the dead by the literal resurrection and He was the One that typified
Firstfruits. Firstfruits is this
ceremony that occurs on the day after the Sabbath, or on the Sunday. Firstfruits always occurred on a Sunday. This is why Jesus rose on a Sunday and this
is why the Christian church down through history has worshiped on a Sunday, not
on a Saturday. We have some people that
like to worship on Saturday; they’re trying very hard to be Jews. Therefore we have people worshiping on Sunday
because this is the day the Lord Jesus fulfilled the Feast of Firstfruits.
Now what do we do with Deut. 16.
Let’s go back to Deut. 16 and start our computation. We’ve learned what day of the week the
computation begins in Deut. 16:9, “Seven weeks shalt thou number unto thee:
begin to number the seven weeks from such time as thou begin to put the sickle
to the grain.” All right, now we know
when they began to put the sickle to the wheat, it was that week within the
Feast of Unleavened Bread that they had this ceremony and they would
dedicate. Therefore what was the
Sabbath? It was a weekly Sabbath; you
add seven complete weeks. First you
start on a Saturday, go to a Saturday, next Saturday, next Saturday, next
Saturday, next Saturday, next Saturday, next Saturday. You’ve gone 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Then it’s the next day after that that
Pentecost is on. Therefore we have the next day after this, which is a Sunday,
Pentecost occurs, always in history on a Sunday. That’s why we have Pentecost Sunday.
What does this tell us? Let’s
look at what Pentecost consisted of.
Verse 10, “And thou shalt keep the feast of weeks,” that’s another word
for the Feast of Pentecost, don’t get these confused. Let me review the feasts we’ve had. Passover, the 14th, we’ve had the
Feast of Unleavened Bread that ran from the 15th to the 21st. We have Firstfruits that occurred within this
week, on whatever Saturday happened to fall inside that interval. By the way, you who are sharp with math will
point out one thing, there was one year when you could have had two situations,
that is an eight day interval and you could have had two Saturdays, at least
some times the way the calendar would work out.
Then you have the fourth feast which is Pentecost. That’s as far as we’ve moved in covering
these feasts. We’ve covered
Passover—fulfillment, cross of Christ; Unleavened Bread—fulfillment separation
from the world system possible now through redemption; Firstfruits—fulfillment
Jesus Christ physically rising from the dead; and now we’re talking about
Pentecost and examining this feast as to what it looked back to and what it
looked forward to.
Look at Pentecost in verse 10, “And you shall keep the feast of shabach,” or the feast of weeks or
Pentecost, unto the LORD thy God with a tribute of a free will offering of
thine hand, which thou shalt give unto the LORD thy God, according as the LORD
thy God has blessed thee.” It was a
grace giving. Verse 11, “And thou shalt
rejoice before the LORD thy God, thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy
manservant, and thy maidservant, and the Levite who is within thy gates, and
the stranger, and the fatherless and the widow who are among you, in the place
which the LORD thy God hath chosen to place His name there.” That tells you something. It tells you that this block of feasts, these
first three, all the Jewish young men and most of the families had to come to
the central shrine of Jerusalem to celebrate this. It was a national holiday. It would be like everyone coming to
Washington DC to celebrate a national holiday.
And then you have Pentecost, and seven weeks later they had to do the
same thing for this feast.
Verse 12, this is what they celebrated, “And thou shalt remember that
thou was a slave in Egypt. And thou
shalt observe and do these statutes.”
The interesting thing is in verse 11 and 12 is that this is another
illustration of worship in the Old Testament.
People often get the impression that the God of the Old Testament is a
God of gore and blood, war and so on.
Isn’t interesting that every time you have worship in the Old Testament
the people were relaxed, they didn’t get tense, they didn’t come in trying to
impress everyone else, they said we’re going to go down to Jerusalem, we’re
going to worship the Lord in peace, in joy and happiness, and pardon the
expression, they enjoyed themselves and had a good relaxed time. That’s amazing
because in most Christian circles if you relax you’re carnal, and people start
wondering if you laugh or crack a smile or something that you must be out of
it. People are so tense. I like to pound
the pulpit once in a while to see who jumps, it tells me who wasn’t paying
attention or who’s tense, who isn’t relaxed, etc. You never get anything out of worship unless
you’re relaxed because you’re so tense you can’t pick anything up, so just
relax. This is the way they did it in
the Old Testament, they went there and they enjoyed themselves.
Verse 13, “Thou shalt observe the feast of tabernacles seven days, after
thou hast gathered in thy grain and thy wine. [14] And thou shalt rejoice in
thy feast, thou, and thy son….” Verse
15, “Seven days shalt thou keep a solemn feast unto the LORD thy God in the
place which the LORD shall choose; because the LORD thy God shall bless thee in
all thine increase.”
Now, what did Pentecost look back to?
Pentecost was looking back to the end of something, the end of the
spring harvest. I want you to be sharp
on this and catch something. Do you
notice what’s happened here? We have two feasts going: one, Firstfruits. What did they do at Firstfruits? They took a sheaf of this grain; and at
Pentecost you have the culmination of this grain, the end of the grain harvest,
and what is offered is a loaf. What is a
loaf? A loaf is the grain that has now
come to that state in which it is edible, that state in which it can be used. In other words, the destiny of the grain has
been fulfilled. Everything is ready for
that grain now to be used the way it has been grown to be used, to be used.
So here at Pentecost the whole picture was that we have now finished the
harvest, it is in, now we can eat, and now we can enjoy the fruits of our
hand. That’s the picture in Pentecost,
and the key to remember this is that the grain that was separated is now in one
loaf. It is now being used. Jewish tradition tells us that not only did
the day of Pentecost occur on the seventh week after Firstfruits, but Jewish
tradition says this, that the very day God spoke the Old Testament covenant
from Mount Sinai was on Pentecost of that year.
So there is another fulfillment, apparently, looking back to the
institution of the old covenant.
Now we come to the most crucial, most difficult to understand portion of
Pentecost. How was Pentecost fulfilled
in history? Clearly the New Testament says Jesus, our Passover, 1 Cor. 5. Clearly the New Testament says the Feast of
Unleavened Bread is fulfilled, 1 Cor. 5.
Clearly the New Testament ways that the Firstfruits is fulfilled in
Jesus Christ, I Cor. 15, but nowhere in the New Testament do you ever find a
statement that says Pentecost has been fulfilled. There’s a reason for this, because Pentecost
has been half fulfilled and half unfulfilled.
It has been half fulfilled or partially fulfilled and partially
unfulfilled and to study this, let’s turn to Jer. 31. We’ll start working our way to the New
Testament. Remember these feasts are for
Israel, not the Church. We’re cut into
the blessings, but the mainstream of these feasts are national holidays of
Israel.
Jer. 31:31, “Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a
new covenant with the house of Israel,” now is that with the Church? No! “…with the house of Israel, and with the
house of Judah, [32] Not according to the covenant that I made with their
fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land
of Egypt, which, my covenant, they broke, although I was an husband unto them,
saith the LORD.” Not the Mosaic
Covenant, why not? Because the Mosaic
Covenant couldn’t empower anything, it was the law, it was like the legislature
passes a law and says everybody will do this, period. And there’s no spirit, there’s nothing that
responds on the inside to that law. So
the Mosaic Covenant in the Old Testament looked at something outside, something
exterior, something that doesn’t motivate from the inside, but God says here,
verse 32, not according to that covenant I made, but verse 33, “But this shall
be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel,” not the Church,
“After those days, saith the LORD, I wile put My law in their inward parts, and
write it in their hearts, and will be their God, and they shall be My
people.” So God is predicting that He is
going to make a New Covenant, and He is going to take the Law of the Old
Testament and make it into an internal thing and put it on the inside. So here we have the creation, the prediction
of a New Covenant.
Now turn to Acts 2 and the day of Pentecost. Let me state the fulfillment of Pentecost and
then we’ll develop it from Acts 2 so you get the picture. Let’s just take 33 AD for the moment, I’m not
sure of that chronology, I haven’t decided myself and I usually don’t like to
commit myself but let’s just say 33 AD.
All right, on the Saturday, and I think the Saturday was the 18th
of Abib, the month Abib or April, in 33 AD Jesus Christ rose from the
dead. Fifty days later, which would
place it at the end of May, fifty days later Pentecost came. Let’s take ourselves and move back in a time
machine and visualize what was happening on that day of Pentecost. Why were all the people come to
Jerusalem. You just read it in the Old
Testament. All the people from all over,
the Diaspora of the ancient world, all over the Mediterranean, Egypt,
Alexandria, and all these great centers of civilization had come to Jerusalem
to celebrate the feast of Pentecost. God
is going to work a miracle here because He has already begun; that year was the
crucial year, that year on the 14th of Nisan the Passover wasn’t
just another Passover that year, that Passover was the final Passover when the
Passover was fulfilled in the death of Christ.
That year the Feast of Firstfruits was a final Feast of Firstfruits and
was fulfilled by the resurrection of Christ, and so it’s going to be on
Pentecost.
This is why in Acts 2:1 we read, “And when the day of Pentecost was
fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.” That’s the believers
in that day, and of course the many people that were in the city of
Jerusalem. Incidentally, for those of
you who are interested, Josephus estimates that two million Jews were in the
city that day. You can imagine what
people did in the motel business on Pentecost.
Therefore it was an amazing day and you had two million people coming
in, they didn’t have cars so two million people could get in the city. Therefore they had these people massed, and
packed, and jammed into the city of Jerusalem.
Now watch what God’s going to do.
He is going to partially fulfill Pentecost in this way. Looking forward in time, He had the fulfillment
of Passover, the cross. He had the
fulfillment of Firstfruits, the resurrection.
And now He is going to fulfill Pentecost in that He is going to make the
Holy Spirit available, who will internalize the Law on the human heart. What’s missing? The nation hasn’t accepted the Messiah, so
although the Holy Spirit comes on schedule on the day of Pentecost, the nation
to whom He was promised doesn’t receive Him because the nation to whom He had
promised rejected the Messiah, except for a remnant. And now the Holy Spirit comes there. This is
what the Holy Spirit did on Pentecost.
He went as far as He could go respecting human volition. The nation had rejected, He made His Spirit
available, on promise, on schedule, but the nation was not prepared to accept
it.
Now let’s read what happened on Pentecost. Verse 2, “And suddenly there came a sound
from heaven like a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they
were sitting. [3] And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like [as of] fire,” not literal fire,
“and it sat upon each of them. [4] And they were all filled with the Holy
Spirit, and began to speak with other tongues, [as the Spirit gave them
utterance]” that means known human languages and not some gobbledy gook that
somebody with a foaming mouth that comes rolling down the aisle preaches. That is just a lunatic that’s off his rocker;
that has nothing to do with the New Testament gift of tongues. Proof of it is if you have a real King James
Version all you have to do is look at the title and you will see how the King
James uses tongues, for in the title page of the Old King James Bibles if you
have one, it says, “This was translated by the majesty of King James into our
native tongue.” Was that talking about
some unknown tongue? No, it was talking
about the English language. So the word
“tongue” there means known languages.
Proof, next verse.
Verse 5, “And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of
every nation under heaven.” And you say
where did they come from? They came
there because that was the day of Pentecost; the day of Pentecost had fully
come. [6] Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and
were confounded, because every man heard them speak in his own language,” that
means known human language. He didn’t
hear him speaking in some gobbledy gook, if the guy spoke Arabic he heard it in
Arabic; if he had come from Crete and heard Cretan he would hear it in Cretan;
if he was from the Grecian peninsula and he had come to Jerusalem he would have
heard the language in his native Greek.
Verse 7, “And they were all amazed and marveled, saying one to another,
Behold, are not all these who speak Galileans?”
That was an insult because Galileans was a synonym for stupid
people. These are the idiots of this
nation and we hear how did these people get bilingual all of a sudden. Verse 8, “And how hear we every man in our
own tongue, wherein we were born?” Look
at the people; this proves to you these were known human languages because
they’re listed. Verse 9, “Parthians, and
Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judea, and Cappadocia,
in Pontus, and Asia, [10] Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of
Libya about Cyrene, and the strangers of Rome, both Jews and proselytes, [11]
Cretans, and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works
of God.” It’s obviously known human
languages.
There’s only one great problem; the manifestation of the Feast
fulfillment was something missing for tongues in recorded in the book of Acts
as that phenomena that was shown forth when Pentecost was fulfilled. Now Peter says in verse 17 that this fulfills
what was spoken of by Joel and it says, “And it shall come to pass,” now he’s
quoting the Old Testament here, this is a quote, you could put quotation marks
before the word “And” in verse 17, “And it shall come to pass in the last days,
says God, I will pour out of My Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your
daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old
men shall dream dreams; [18] And on My servants and on My handmaidens I will pour
out in those days of My Spirit, and they shall prophesy. [19] And I will show wonders in heaven above,
and signs in the earth beneath; blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke. [20] The
sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before that great
and notable day of the Lord come; [21] And it shall come to pass that whosoever
shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” End of quote.
Now I want you to notice something about that quote. There’s a key phrase inside that parenthesis,
inside those quotations marks that tells you why tongues occurred and not these
symptoms. Look at those symptoms, verse
19, were there signs in heaven in Acts 2?
No! Were there people “upon all
flesh,” verse 17, was the Holy Spirit poured out on “all flesh?” No!
Then how can Peter say “this was that which was spoken of by the prophet
Joel?” This isn’t a fulfillment of Joel
and yet Peter says it is. How are we to
reconcile this? We are to reconcile it
because Joel predicted the giving of the Holy Spirit. He said God will certainly give the Holy
Spirit to you Israel, and Peter says see Israel, God has given the Holy Spirit
to us. But back in Joel’s day Joel said
the Holy Spirit will be accompanied by these signs and he listed them, and you
can’t find the word “tongues” in the quote from the Old Testament. Why not?
Because tongues is not a sign of blessing.
For example, in verse 17 we have “all flesh,” let’s look at that
word. This is the key to the whole
passage. Ask yourself, be reasonable,
could God literally have poured out His Spirit on all flesh when part of the
flesh had rejected Messiah? No, this is
why Joel’s prophecy couldn’t be fulfilled in Peter’s day because God couldn’t
pour His Spirit out on all flesh. This
is a prediction on all flesh, but you have part of the nation of positive
volition and part of the nation on negative volition and therefore God can’t
pour out His Spirit according to Joel.
So when the Holy Spirit does appear on this earth, when He does come in
Acts 2, He comes with modified characteristics so instead of the set of
characteristics of Joel He comes with a new characteristic. Instead of all of those many characteristics,
He comes only with one characteristic, tongues. And therefore you find all the
signs missing, and you find them all replaced by one sign, and that sign is
crucial to any student of Old Testament prophecy.
Turn back to Isaiah 28; this is the place where tongues is spoken of in
the Old Testament. This is the prophecy
of tongues in the Old Testament. Notice
this carefully because I tell you 95% of the Christian public today does not
know tongues, [blank spot] they have no idea of tongues, and if you want to
really be confused read some of the literature on tongues. I deliberately buy it and read it through
just so I know exactly what people are saying so people can’t say I’m
misrepresenting. I know what people are
saying because I read the literature.
I’m on every sucker list that you can imagine. Therefore, tongues is a very confusing
subject in our day and I want to show you from the Old Testament what the real
story is.
Isaiah 28:7, now remind you, this is the only place that tongues occurs
in the entire Bible before Acts 2. This
is why this passage is so crucial. “And
they also,” now look at the context, Isaiah isn’t talking about blessing to the
nation, he’s talking about discipline, he’s going back to the Mosaic Law which
operated like this: you had blessing and cursing under the Mosaic economy. The nation would be blessed, which would
consider occupation of the land; they would have economic prosperity, they
would be a worldwide testimony, they would have military victory if they were blessed. But if they disobeyed God they had the
opposite of these four characteristics, instead of occupation of the land they
had dispersion, 586 BC; instead of military victory they had military defeat;
instead of having economic prosperity they had economic calamity; in place of a
worldwide testimony they were a reproach.
This was the blessing, this was the cursing. The Mosaic Law operated, as we shall see in
Deut. 28, according to five cycles of discipline. There were five levels of
spanking, you might say. In other words,
God said listen Israel, if you mess around I’m going to spank you, one time; you
keep on messing around and I’m going to spank you two times; you keep on
defying Me and you get it three times; four times, and if you do it to the
fifth time I am going to throw you out of the land. God never tore up the title deed, Israel
still owns the land but God said you’re not going to enjoy your possession; I’m
going to kick you out of here. You are
not going to enjoy your blessing and this is the fifth cycle of discipline or
the fifth level of discipline.
This is the context of Isaiah 28, he’s not talking about blessing in
Isaiah 28, he’s talking about discipline, and in verse 7 Isaiah writes, “But
they also have erred through wine, and through strong drink are out of the
way.” Who’s “they?” These are the leaders of the nation. “The
priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink; they are swallowed up
of wine, they are out of the way through strong drink, they err in vision, they
stumble in judgment. [8] For all tables are full of vomit and filthiness, so
that there is no place clean.” Does that
give you a pretty picture of blessing?
Just imagine, let’s be really blunt tonight and you imagine a table
covered with vomit. That’s exactly the
picture of Isaiah. Pardon me if I offend
some of you people with a very sensitive taste but this is the way the Word of
God is written because it’s going to shock you into realizing what Isaiah is
talking about. He’s talking about filthy
vomit covered tables. Do you ever
associate a vomit covered table with blessing?
That’s the context here. Now
watch what happens.
Verse 9, “Whom shall he teach knowledge?
And whom shall he make to understand doctrine?” These people have hardened their hearts
against the Bible, they probably have a “God is dead” movement going around
Israel at the time and all the rest of the malarkey and saying the Bible isn’t
authoritative any more, science has disproved it, etc. etc. etc. And these people wouldn’t listen. So God says
“Who’s going to learn doctrine around here, who’s interested in learning My
Word.” Verse 10, “For precept must be
upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a
little, and there a little.” This is
the Old Testament method of teaching.
But in verse 11 He says the method of they are going to learn the
doctrine by is “with stammering lips and another tongue will he speak to this
people.”
All the Bible teaches that Israel couldn’t communicate to Israel and so
God says all right, I have had it; I have sent My teachers to this nation year
after year, century after century, and you don’t listen so you know what I’m
going to give you Israel? I’m going to
give you a course on Bible doctrine and guess who the teachers are going to
be? “Stammering lips,” what does this
mean? It’s a slang word in the Hebrew
for Gentile tongues, it refers to anything, it refers to Medo-Persian, it
refers to Babylonian, and it has referred to Greek. The Gentile languages, languages identified
with the Gentiles are called “stammering lips.”
Therefore God says I’m going to teach you and you’re going to be sorry
you ever played ball with Me this way, I’m going to teach you through Gentile
languages.
Now does it make sense what happened in Acts 2? Do you see what happened? When the Holy Spirit came, what does the Holy
Spirit do? He teaches, that’s the
ministry of the Holy Spirit and so when He comes He is come on schedule. In other words, He had an appointment to be
at this place this hour and He was to come with blessing, and if He would come
with blessing all these things in Joel would occur. And Peter says listen, the Holy Spirit has
come, just like Joel said, but I got news for you Israel, He’s not come with
blessing. Therefore He’s come in here, it’s
like a professor walking into the classroom and instead of grades… you have a
classroom and the whole class is wondering, we just took the test last week and
here comes the prof with the exam and he comes walking in with about 50 exam
sheets in front of him and he plops that thing down and you can tell the way he
plopped those exams down that somebody blew it.
They pick up the exams and he says all right. Now the prof came in Monday morning to the
class on schedule, but did he come with blessings? He did not, he came with cursings. You people flunked this thing and the class average
was 10. Now I’m going to teach you
something, so the professor rears back and he says you kids haven’t learned a
thing all semester so in the next two minutes I’m going to teach you the whole
thing, I’m going to ram it right down your throat. That’s the analogy here.
The Holy Spirit has come but instead of coming with blessing He has come
this time with cursing and the sign of the cursing is tongues. Do you see tongues is totally misconstrued in
our time? Tongues is not a sign of great
spirituality; it’s a sign of carnality.
The fact that God had to speak to the nation in tongues is a sign that
the nation has been disobedient, and it fulfills the prophecy of Isaiah 28 and
Paul records this in 1 Cor. 14.
Now therefore, look at the invitation back in Acts 2:38, you see now why
I say again and again, you cannot… you CANNOT walk into the book of Acts and
start building doctrine. Oh, I’ve got a
good verse in the book of Acts and you come out and make some big hairy
statement and you get all the other dumb saints impressed because you’re able
to quote a verse and you find some verse in Acts that says something. Let me warn you, you can’t understand the
book of Acts unless you first understand Old Testament prophecy and the Gospels
and that’s a mighty big order for anyone.
Every nitwit I have ever met, every founder of a cult I have ever met
has come out with all sorts of oddities, like the statement, “I wish the Church
would get back to the way it was in the book of Acts.” I don’t wish that, absolutely not. The Church in the book of Acts is not
normative. You don’t find a normative
church in the Bible until you get down to the pastoral epistles of 1 Timothy, 2
Timothy and Titus. There is no normative
church in the book of Acts. The Acts church is something that is
transitional. In fact it isn’t even
identified as a church until Paul comes.
Therefore the book of Acts does not give you the normative process of
the church life, so don’t built things, what Lubbock Bible Church should be and
compare it to the book of Acts. You
compare it to 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy and Titus and Revelation 2-3.
Acts 2:38 is the end of the sermon and here’s the invitation that Peter
gives, another invitation, which by the way, because people don’t study they
misunderstand the whole thing. “Then
Peter said unto them [plural], Repent,” those of you who know English, “repent”
we have the second person plural verb form for “repent.” Is that addressed to a
single person or a group? Second plural
is always addressed to a group of people.
So he says to the entire crowd, “you all repent,” only the Texan can say
it the way it should sound, “ya’all repent” and that’s what he means,
plural. He goes on in verse 38 and says,
“and be baptized, every one of you,” now he switches something. The word “baptize” here is third
singular. Isn’t that interesting, what
does that mean? It’s an address to the
group, “you all repent, and those who repent, let everyone of you individually,
personally be baptized.” That’s the
point.
Now he goes on, “…be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus
Christ for the remission of sins,” that by itself sounds like oh-oh, that means
that we can’t be saved unless we’re baptized but just hold the place and turn
to Matt. 3. By this exercise I think
you’re beginning to appreciate that the book of Acts is a very difficult
book. It’s not only difficult but if you
read the Greek, Luke was one of the most difficult writers in the original
language. Luke was a classically
educated man; his sentence structure, his entire language in the book of Acts
and in the Gospel are the model of New Testament Greek. If you want to go to the sloppiest writer of
the New Testament, turn to 1 and 2 Peter, the guy can’t even put a sentence
together correctly. But Luke was a
superb writer. Only one writer in the
New Testament exceeds Luke’s skill with the original languages and that is
whoever it was that wrote the book of Hebrews.
In Matt. 3:1 we have John the Baptist. “In those days came John the
Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, [2] And saying, Repent; for the
kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Guess
what? That is second plural, John is
saying the same thing in his day that Peter would say on the day of Pentecost
because both of them are saying the same thing, Israel, accept your Messiah and
the Kingdom will come. In other words,
the King is here, He’s going to reign in His Kingdom, “Repent.” Verse 3, “For this is he that was spoken of
by the prophet, Isaiah,” etc. He attracted a crowd and here comes the crowd in
verse 5, they all came out to him, etc.
Verse 6, “And were baptized by him in the Jordan, confessing their
sins. But I want you to see something. I want you to watch the baptismal procedure
of John the Baptist so those of you who think when Peter said be “baptized for
remission of sins” that he’s not saying that your sins are forgiven because you
are being baptized, and you can prove this by simply watching how John does the
same thing, same language as Peter exactly, and watch how he administers
baptism.
Verse 7, “But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to
his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of snakes,” and this is the Greek
word for poisonous snakes, that wasn’t a nice thing to do, if he’d had a course
in seminary on how to greet people at the door they would have said this is
horrible. I had a professor in the
pastoral theology class that I’m sure he’d flunk John the Baptist because he
didn’t send birthday cards to all the Pharisees, etc. and send flowers when
somebody died and all the rest of the gimmicks that go on. John the Baptist didn’t bother with that
nonsense and he said “O generation of snakes, who warned you to flee from the
wrath to come?” Now verse 8, watch it,
“Bring forth, therefore, fruits fitting for repentance,” and then I will
baptize you. What was John’s point? The point was that they had to be converted
and at the point of conversion they were justified, then after that they were
baptized as an outer testimony to this thing and you can see how John the
Baptist is doing it, this is what Peter was doing and you can show this
language parallels all through the Gospels.
Back in Acts 2 and we see Peter talking about being baptized, he says
those of you of the nation Israel, and by the way, who is not baptized
here? Do you notice who is not
re-baptized? The disciples. When did they get baptized? When did Peter
himself get baptized? Either by John the
Baptist or by Jesus when Jesus started, and then the disciples baptized each
other, etc. it went on like that, but they didn’t re-baptize them, the baptism
here is an invitation to those who as a result of all this Pentecostal
goings-on have now decided that Jesus was who He claimed to be and are willing
to bow and accept Him as their Messiah.
And then he says, verse 38, “[Repent, and be baptized, every one of you,
in the name of Jesus Christ] for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive
the gift of the Holy Spirit. [39] For the promise is unto you, and to your
children, and to all that are afar off, even as man as the Lord, our God, shall
call,” and there he refers back to Joel 2.
So Peter’s sermon in Acts 2 actually goes back to the prophecy of Joel.
By comparing the prophecy of Joel with what actually happened on the day of
Pentecost we now can come to certain conclusions. Let’s go to Pentecost again. Here’s the Feast of Pentecost. What does the Feast of Pentecost base itself
on? End of the spring harvest. What does this mean? It means that the grain was ready. Ready for what? Ready for that for which it
was grown for. All right, parallel then;
in history what was the fulfillment of Pentecost when Israel (quote) “would
have been ready for its assigned task.”
That’s what Pentecost is fulfilling; it has nothing to do with the
Church.
Now the problem where the Church comes in is because Israel wasn’t in
that position. Israel had rejected; God
couldn’t fulfill the prophecy of Joel because the prophecy of Joel included
that crucial statement, “I pour out My Spirit on all flesh,” God is not going
to pour His Spirit out on those who have rejected His Son. Therefore God did not fulfill Joel, but
instead He took the Holy Spirit, like that professor who walked into the class
Monday morning on schedule but instead of passing out the exams and an air of
blessing, he slammed them down in an air of condemnation and began to
teach. And the Holy Spirit here begins
to teach the nation, once again another invitation to receive the Kingdom.
Later on we find out that God did, on the day of Pentecost, set up the
Church, but that was not revealed until Paul came along. If you had been there, if we could go back in
a time machine and interview Peter and you would ask Peter at that time, Peter,
what did God do here, he would not have said God set up His Church. Although God did set up the Church on
Pentecost it was not recognized by the apostles until later on. Then it dawned on them what God had really
done. And the man who helped this
“dawning” was the Apostle Paul. But you
see why you’re going to get in trouble when you mess around in the book of
Acts. You don’t have a normal church
situation developing here, you actually have a group of born again Jews who are
in loose religious affiliation worshiping in the Temple every day. Is that normative New Testament
Christianity? Do we go to the Temple
every day to pray? No. So you see, Acts is not a normative picture
of the Church. The normative picture of
the Church is given in the Pastoral Epistles.
Next week we will finish up these feasts and we will take the feasts in
the fall cycle. Tonight we have
concluded the spring cycle of feasts. The spring cycle of feasts terminated
with Pentecost. You have Passover, we have
had the Feast of Unleavened Bread, we’ve had Firstfruits and we’ve had Pentecost. Those are four feasts that were literally
fulfilled in history. Next time we’ll
deal with the fall feasts, or the next cycle of feasts. And our claim as interpreters of the Bible
literally, that just as God fulfilled those feasts in the spring literally, He
is going to fulfill the feasts in the fall literally. And this also tells you something, preview of
coming attractions, the fulfillment of the fall feasts, the Day of Atonement,
the Trumpets, has not been fulfilled in 1948 with the erection of the state of
Israel. I have heard Christians say
well, 1948 when Israel got its political independence, isn’t that a fulfillment
of these feasts. No it isn’t. Do you
know why? Because Israel became a nation
in the spring, not the fall. You see,
from these feasts it’s amazing how much you can fill in God’s prophetic time
table because it tells you something; it tells you the month the Millennium is
going to start, the very month; we don’t know what year but we now know from
these feasts what month the Millennium is going to start, in some October,
because it’s going to start exactly on the fulfillment of the Feast of
Tabernacles, which is one of these future feasts to be fulfilled.
So that’s why these feasts are so important and once again recall the fact
that this is a national calendar set up for