Because He Lives – Pentecost is the final installment from our Easter sermon series Because He Lives. Happy birthday, Christian Church! It’s Pentecost!
Festival Time
Pentecost was also one of three festivals that were not optional for God’s people. The other is Passover, of course – when God’s people celebrated the exodus out of Egypt. The third was the feast of tents or tabernacles when God’s people would go camping! They did this for two reasons 1) to remember their time in the wilderness after the Exodus from Egypt until they reached the promised land of Canaan. 2) They remembered that they were not permanent fixtures here in on earth. We’re but strangers here. Heaven is our home. If you’re up for it, go camping sometime – it can be fun. What’s really fun is that first night’s sleep in your bed, your home after sleeping in a tent for a few nights. That doesn’t touch the rest we’ll enjoy in heaven.
A Puzzle Put Together
Now let’s put our little festival lesson together. If you were a Jew standing at that first Pentecost – that rebranded Pentecost for the New Testament church, this is what you would’ve been thinking. Jesus came during Passover week. At the time when all the lambs were brought in by God’s people for inspection – Jesus walked through the temple courtyard, turning over tables and throwing money saying, “Look the spotless lamb of God.” At the time of the Passover feast when the lambs were slaughtered, our Lamb of God was crucified. Two days later, on the third day when the first sheaf was brought in from the fields by some middle school boy with too much energy, the first born from the dead took back his life. Fifty days later, after Jesus had ascended into heaven, God’s people were gathered in Jerusalem again for the feast of weeks, the harvest festival. On that festival the Holy Spirit descended on his people visibly and the gospel went out. God the Holy Spirit took for himself a harvest of 3000.
Want to hear more? Watch this week’s message taken from Acts 2 Because He Lives – Pentecost.
Book(s): Acts
Series: Because He Lives
Tag(s): Holy Spirit
Speaker(s): Fred Guldberg