This blog post is part of the ChristianWriters.com blog chain. This month our theme is “fresh air.” See the links to the right and enjoy what my friends have to say about fresh air.
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This Sunday, June 12 marks the end of the Easter season on the Christian liturgical calendar. Specifically, this Sunday, we celebrate Pentecost. Scripture tells us that Pentecost is the day Jesus’ disciples received the Holy Spirit. This supernatural event is recounted in Acts 2:
When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
PENTECOST
The word Pentecost comes from the Greek word pentekoste meaning 50 days. Fifty comes from the root word “pent” for “five” as in pentagon, a geometric shape with five sides.
Easter Sunday marked Day One of the 40 days the risen Christ walked among us before taking his place in heaven. Fifty days after his resurrection, on Pentecost, he gifted his believers with the Holy Spirit.
The day we observe as Christian Pentecost was also celebrated before Jesus’ time by Jews as the Feast of the Harvest or Pentecost. For the 49 days after Passover, farmers set aside first fruits of their wheat harvest.
On the 50th day, they would make a pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem to present their offering and to celebrate the receipt of the 10 Commandments and the Torah—the first five books of our Christian Old Testament, also known as the Pentateuch or Books of Moses. The Feast of the Harvest, the Jewish Pentecost, was one of the most important holy days in Judaism.
Even after Paul’s conversion, return to Jerusalem for Pentecost was an important event in the lives of the Jewish people. Acts 20:16 tells us:
Paul had decided to sail past Ephesus to avoid spending time in the province of Asia, for he was in a hurry to reach Jerusalem, if possible, by the day of Pentecost.
COINCIDENCE?
Notice anything interesting about these two important Jewish holy days?
Jesus, the Lamb of God, was sacrificed during the celebration of Passover, when Jews sacrificed lambs to remember the preservation of the Hebrew people. Jesus’ sacrifice was for the eternal preservation of all mankind.
One of Jesus’ first instructions to his 12 disciples reported in Matthew 9: 37-38: “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”
This was followed immediately by Jesus’ instructions to the disciples to drive out spirits and heal in His name. To harvest people for salvation.
The Jewish harvest celebration of Pentecost coincided with the arrival of the Holy Spirit to the early Christians, which promised empowerment of all believers for God’s spiritual harvest.
Does God do coincidences?
FRESH AIR
Take a look at Acts 2 again:
Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.
The followers of Jesus were inside a house and yet the house was filled up with sound from heaven. It got everyone’s attention. After that, they were filled with the Holy Spirit.
The gift of the Holy Spirit is given to all of us when we receive Christ into our hearts. I’ve not seen a flame over anyone’s heads when they marched down the aisle during altar call, though. Nor have I heard the sound of a mighty wind within a closed room.
But when I am still, I can almost hear the sound of God; sometimes as a gentle whisper; sometimes as a mighty storm. I am reminded that He is in control, and that He is working in and through me, by the Holy Spirit.
Just as He did more than 2000 years ago with the new Christians shut inside a house.
To the early Christians, holding on to a fragile new faith, the Holy Spirit flowing through the house and settling upon them, must have been the very breath of fresh air they needed. Whisking away doubts and literally filling them with the power of God.
The Holy Spirit in us is fresh air to the soul. When we are open to its presence, it can flow as a gentle whisper or a mighty wind. Let us open the windows of our heart and let it flow.
PRAYER: Heavenly Father, thank you for your power. Jesus, thank you for the gift of the Holy Spirit and for the power you instill in us. Remind us that you, Holy Spirit, as spirit, are fresh air to our souls, to our minds and to our faith. Use us, dear Lord, for your purpose. Amen.
WHAT ABOUT YOU? Do you think it was a coincidence that the Holy Spirit was given to early Christians first on the day Jewish people celebrated both the harvest and the giving of the law? Do you even believe in coincidences when it comes to God?
