Christ in the Feast of Pentecost:
The Spirit and the Word give life
Based on texts from Exodus 32 and Acts 2
A
sermon by Bob Mendelsohn
Given
at Hobart City Church of Christ
19
May 2013
Greetings
Thanks
to the pastor Marshall and all those who have been and will be involved in my
being here this weekend. I’m ever grateful for Hobart City Church of Christ for
your love for the Jewish people and desire to share Y’shua with them. As you
might know, on Argyle Street the synagogue is the longest-continuing Jewish
synagogue in the Southern Hemisphere. And we can help reach them.
I
hope you will fill out the white card you received this morning, sometime while
I’m speaking, and we will collect those with an offering later on in the
service.
Let
me continue with my message after prayer.
Prayer
Introduction
Beaconsfield 2006.
Trapped miners and a worried public. Christchurch 2011. Devastation.
Earthquake. And tremors that continued. I saw the city last year and it’s still
unbuilt from the ruin.
Months later,
Fukishima Japan. Earthquake and tsunami. And then weeks later, another earthquake
as tremors continue.
Natural and
unnatural disasters happen, and many of us are used to that, but now and then
worried about them. Especially if our children or grandchildren are near the
epicenters.
For most of us,
life is a driving force, keeping and getting life, almost whatever the cost.
That’s a prime driver for humanity and for us as humans, amen?
Last Tuesday
night in Bondi and St Kilda and in Jerusalem and in New York City Jews celebrated
Pentecost with commensurate eating of blintzes and cheesecakes. They stayed up
all night reading and praying and learning Torah, especially the Book of Ruth.
What is their
motivation and what can we learn from their busy-ness and their thinking? And
what does God have to say to us as 21st century people about what
gives us life?
Images of Mount
Sinai
For that, we have
to return 3,500 years to the point in Jewish and really world history, where
God gave the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) to mankind, specifically
to the Jews, then that the Jews might pass on the information to the rest of
humanity. Pentecost is called the ‘Time of the Giving of the Torah.” Why
‘giving’ and not ‘receiving?’ Because every time we listen to the Bible read
here at church or in our private devotions, on Christian radio, or wherever, we
‘receive’ the Bible’s truths. One time, God gave it, but each subsequent time
we as individuals can receive it again.
The scene at Mt Sinai
was raucous to say the least. The book of Exodus unveils the scene as one of
chaos. What’s there? Look, there is fire
and wind and a voice. Ezekiel 1 is read that same day, on Pentecost (which we
call “Shavuot” or “Feast of Weeks”) and it’s designed to link with and show us
the exaggerated activity of a storm, a wild storm, uncharacteristic storms of
high energy and God’s voice coming from within it.
Ezekiel says, “And as I looked, behold, a
storm wind was coming from the north, a great cloud with fire flashing forth
continually and a bright light around it, and in its midst something like
glowing metal in the midst of the fire.”(Ezek. 1.4)
Later on in the Bible, the writer of Hebrews shows us even more of that
scene and contrasts it with our Mt of Revelation.
For you have not come to a mountain that
may be touched and to a blazing fire, and to darkness and gloom and whirlwind,
and to the blast of a trumpet and the sound of words which sound was such that
those who heard begged that no further word should be spoken to them. For they
could not bear the command, “If even a
beast touches the mountain, it will be stoned.” And so terrible was the sight,
that Moses said, “I am full of fear and
trembling.”
But you have come to Mount Zion and to the
city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to
the general assembly and church of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven,
and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of righteous men made perfect,
and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which
speaks better than the blood of Abel. … For if those did not escape when they
refused him who warned them on earth, much less shall we escape who turn away
from Him who warns from heaven. And His voice shook the earth then, but now He
has promised, saying, “Yet once more I
will shake not only the earth, but also the heaven… Therefore, since we receive
a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we may offer
to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming
fire.” (Heb 12.18-29)
What a scene of awe and fear. This is
stuff Stephen Spielberg would love to create.
“And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to
meet with God; and they stood at the nether part of the mount. And Mount Sinai
was altogether on a Smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in Fire: and the
smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked
greatly. And when the voice of the trumpet sounded long, and waxed louder and
louder, Moses spake and God answered him by a voice. And the LORD came down
upon Mount Sinai, on the top of the mount: and the LORD called Moses up to the
top of the mount; and Moses went up.” (Exodus 19) You get it.
With all of Israel standing, quaking, and
basically traumatized after 400 years of slavery, terror at the Red Sea, a
narrow escape, and a month and a half of wandering in the wilderness, building
the Golden Calf and thinking it’s all lost, then they saw the lightning and thunder
and great wind, and wondered if it was all over. I would have been afraid, and
I imagine I’m not alone in this sanctuary.
Fear was on them. Moses returned and
brought 2 tablets of stone. On them were 10 phrases. And God used those 10 words
to define a constitution for the former slaves.
Listen, fire shakes things up. Earthquakes
shake things up. We all need a good
shake up now and then, don’t we? I even heard some commentator reviewing why
the tornadoes are going on in the US in large measure…he refered to Global
Warming.
I believe that Sinai was one of the first places of Global Warming ever
recorded. And God was heating things up for Israel and on Israel that we as
Jews might take a renewed, invigorated, ‘on fire’ religion and go to the
nations.
The Spirit came on the church as a fire; he came onto Jesus as a dove.
Jesus needed no cleansing; we are
desperate for it.
Go to the Nations with
God’s Tongue
The
stories are many about Jews and the Giving of Torah. OK, they are jokes about
Jewish people and although they are funny, I’m running low on extra time this
morning, so write me and I’ll share some with you.
The quickest is, “God offered the Word to 70 nations,
but each said no. He came to the Jewish people and offered us the Torah. Moses
said, “How much for the 5 commandments?” God said, ‘they are free.” Moses
replied, “I’ll take 10.” By the way, I can say that joke; I get worried if you
do.
Luke tells us at beginning of Acts 2 that
there were people from every nation. This would reflect the 70 nations believed
to exist. And sometimes they were called 70 tongues, since a nation usually is
defined not by geographic borders, but by its language.
According
to the rabbis, all of the 70 nations thought to exist 3500 years ago were offered
the Torah; they refused. But, as a result of what we read in Acts 2, what happened
on Pentecost, those same 70 nations were able to hear the Gospel.
Let me mention the Tower of Babel. That is
where God came down to confuse (that’s what the word “Babel” means) all the
people by creating national languages. At that time everyone was speaking the
same language. But after Babel, everyone spoke different languages.
It is significant to note that a Jewish
commentary on the book of Exodus, recalling chapter 10 of Genesis, which sketches
a map of the 70 nations which were then thought to comprise humanity as a
whole, leads them back to Sinai to hear the word of God: "At Sinai the Lord's voice was divided
into 70 languages, so that all the nations could understand" (Exodus
Rabbah 5, 9). I’m not sure how the rabbis sorted that out and can prove it. In
all my reading, I’ve never seen Hebrew as a universal language. If anything,
the problem of Babel is aggravated by Sinai.
However, in the Lucan Pentecost, the Word
of God is addressed to humanity through the Apostles, in order to proclaim
"the mighty works of God" (Acts 2:11) to all peoples even with their
differences. A clear overcoming not only of national differences, but of the
Tower of Babel problem resident on humanity, the inability to speak at peace
with one another.
You might think I have an acccent, but
I’ve lived and worked in Sydney for 14 years having moved from New York City.
And two years ago my wife and two of my kids passed our citizenship exams. So
this is now officially an Australian accent.
A few years ago I was in Melbourne, and
upon arrival at the airport I rang a Jewish woman I’d met on the phone a year
before. She is a Mendelsohn and when our team was cold calling Jewish surnames,
I rang her and dozens of others. She seemed interested and I marked her name as
such on our computer. So on arrival I wanted to meet up with her. She was open
to my visiting and had a friend, Alice, come by from next door. Alice is a
Baptist, and wanted to know how Jews, Jesus and Jews for Jesus went together.
Now my new Jewish contact is originally
from Scotland, and although I’ve traveled the world, I had a very difficult
time understanding her accent. Sure, her words were English words, but they
were foreign sounding to me. It was her dialect (a Greek word meaning ‘tongue’
and used in Acts 2 of what the disciples received that day) that threw me off.
Long story short, June prayed with me to accept Jesus that
afternoon. She is reading her Bible now
and Alice is helping her. She is being looked after by a church which meets
just around the corner from their flats. God is good!
What Babel evidences, the inability of
people to speak with each other, Pentecost overcomes as people from 70 nations
can hear the same words in their own language and respond in faith, amen?
Tongues divided
the world in Babel; tongues unite the world in Pentecost.
And remember what
the 120 did when they got the Holy Spirit that Pentecost day? They went
downstairs and outside and preached so that the 3,000 could find eternal life.
We hear the Gospel; we respond and believe and we go to preach it.
What is in our
hearts comes out our mouths. Jesus said, “For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart.“ (Matthew 12.34) In
fact 15 times in the Newer Testament, people are filled or the phrase is used
“filled (or baptized) with the Spirit” and each time what follows is speaking.
If you believe in Jesus and have a relationship with him you will speak about
him to others. And they will hear and learn and some will come to faith in
Jesus.
Conversion and Pentecost
One point to
mention about this holiday is the uniqueness in relation to sin. At every festival the Torah informs us that
one has to bring a sin offering. Only on the festival of Shavuot is the word
'sin' not mentioned. Why? “For on the festival of Shavuot, the day of the
receiving of the Torah, all Jews are like the convert "newborn", and
so free of all sin.” (R Levi Yitschak of Berditchev)
What R Levi Yitschak means and what we
mean may be different. Let’s be clear. We all need to be cleansed of sin. We
all need shaking up. And in Pentecost we have God calling us to listen, to hear
his words in whatever languages, and to be born from above. He wants to fulfill
His words of Jeremiah 31. There God predicts through the ancient prophet,
“Behold, days are coming,”
declares the LORD, “when I will make a
new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the
covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to
bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I
was a husband to them, “declares the
LORD. “But this is the covenant which I
will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the LORD, “I will put My law within them, and on their
heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.
“And they shall not teach again, each man his
neighbor and each man his brother, saying,
‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know Me, from the least of them to
the greatest of them,” declares the LORD,
“for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no
more.” (31.31-34)
This new covenant is God’s promise. This
new covenant is enacted on Passover, 7
weeks before Pentecost when Y’shua took up the 3rd cup during the
seder and initiated it. And in his dying and rising from the dead, we can all
be forgiven of our sins, we can all be converted, we can all know God. It’s a
new covenant, not like the covenant of Moses (the Old covenant). This is
conversion in the best sense of the word.
And why do we read the Book of Ruth? The
rabbis say we read Ruth due to its harvest/reaping motif and originally this
was an agricultural holiday. They also say we read Ruth because King David, her
descendant, died on Shavuot and because Ruth was a convert and at Sinai we were
like converts. God transformed us from
ordinary people to a special nation.
And why do we eat dairy products? The word
of God is likened to “milk and honey” and we eat to remind ourselves of that
sweetness.
Conversion brings
life, not death
In Exodus 32 we read of the return of
Moses with the 2 Tablets of the Law. And the Jewish populace was behaving
riotously and the brother of Moses, Aaron, lied about how the Golden Calf
incident happened. Moses was angry and invited the people to join him. The sons
of Levi did (Moses’ tribe too) and that day the text tells us, “So the sons of Levi did as Moses instructed,
and about three thousand men of the people fell that day.” (Exodus 32.28)
Now if you know much about Bible, you know
the precision of biblical numbers is a worthy study itself. For instance,
exactly how many men came out of Egypt from each family and each tribe? No
round numbers here; no approximations. Even after the Resurrection, Peter goes
fishing and catches 153 fish. (John 21.11)
So it’s very surprising to read the phrase
“about 3,000 men” in Exodus. Is it random? Not at all.
Acts chapter two, our principle text
today, shows us that as a result of the preaching of Peter, Jewish people
interrupted his sermon and said, “What shall we do?” (Acts 2.37) and Peter told
them to repent and get baptized and get filled with the Holy Spirit, for the
‘promise is for you, and your children, and all who are far off” (This means
the Jews, the Jewish families, and Gentiles). And who responded? “So then, those who had received his word
were baptized; and there were added that day about three thousand souls.” (Acts
2.41)
No coincidence here. What brought death in Moses’ day
brought life in Peter’s day. And to the exact number of people. ‘About 3,000!’
And Paul made a
point of this in 2 Corinthians 3.
“Not that we are adequate in ourselves to
consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God, who
also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of
the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. But if the
ministry of death, in letters engraved on stones, came with glory, so that the
sons of Israel could not look intently at the face of Moses because of the
glory of his face, fading as it was, how shall the ministry of the Spirit fail
to be even more with glory?” (3.5-8)
So
the Spirit brings life and the Law brings death. But let’s be too simple here. What we
mean by Spirit always contains
Scripture. What we mean by Law
contains more than Scripture. Here’s what I mean.
Paul uses the term ‘The Law’ to mean a
checklist system, with requirements and guilt for failure and pride for
satisfaction. It starts in the Scripture, but goes past its intent. ‘The Spirit’
(as Paul used the term) is God’s word enabled in our lives. It’s the
requirements of the Law put into our hearts of flesh. (Jer. 31).
Spirit
without the Word is Emotionalism; Word without Spirit is legalism.
But together, they are what Paul calls
“Spirit” and we could say“ The Spirit and the Word bring Life.” Jesus said “It
is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have
spoken to you are spirit and are life.” (John 6.63)
That’s it…that’s how we win in this transitory
life. We trust the Spirit and God’s Words, they bring us life. Fukishima plant technicians and Beaconsfield
mine survivors, and Christchurch earthquake survivors all share victories of
still breathing, but what you and I can count on is that those who trust Jesus
and are anointed with his fire and word, enter into life and live it to the
fullest.
About 3000 folks can live; 5,000 the next
day (Acts 4) and who knows how many in Hobart or in Sydney or around Australia
and Israel will hear God’s word and live, even today?
Pentecost is not Passover. On Passover we
are forgiven. On Pentecost we are empowered to live out and proclaim the
Gospel. Let’s be out sharing this message. Let’s go out and tell. What do you
say?
By the way, you received a card when you
came in to church today, and I hope you have filled it out by now. Please tear
off the stub, keep the smaller card, and turn in the larger card into the
offering as it’s collected today. You may always donate via direct debiting
like so many are doing now, or use your credit card for donating, whatever is
easier for you. When you give, you are joining us in proclaiming the Gospel to
our Jewish people, and to the 70 nations and to anyone who is listening. Thanks for that participation.
If you are not yet a believer in Jesus,
today can be your day. On this day in history, God poured out His Spirit on 120
waiting folks, not sure what was about to happen. And maybe that’s what you are
feeling. What will happen if I give my life to Jesus? What will happen if I
join this mob? The adventure for you may be unique, and yet will contain some
of the following: joy in being forgiven of your sins, a desire to know God on a
personal basis, power to share what you believe with those who don’t yet
believe, and a longing to be with Jesus one day down the road. For you I’m
excited. Today, take Him as your Lord, repent of your sins, and receive His
forgiveness. Then tell one of us, won’t you? We’ll rejoice together with you
and help you walk this out one day at a time.
Pastor Marshall, what a joy to be back
here in Hobart with you and then later today with others who care about my
Jewish people. Thanks for what you continue to do, to help us as we partner
together in this ministry, to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile.
Shalom.
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