- Take some time to celebrate today for, filled with the Spirit, our best days are yet to come!
Some say that a personal relationship with Jesus is by far the most important thing in life. On one level of understanding, we should certainly agree.
But what if God has something more in mind?
The disciples, it should go without saying, enjoyed a very up-close-and-personal relationship with Jesus. And yet, in the hours before His crucifixion, we find them denying Him, betraying Him, sleeping as Jesus toils in prayer, and running for their lives in the time of His greatest need. Post-resurrection, they are locked in fear behind closed doors.
E. Stanley Jones, famous missionary to India, maintains that you can draw a line down the New Testament: on one side, there is denial, betrayal, fear; then, Pentecost.
And there is your line. Right down the 2nd chapter of Acts.
Jesus told His disciples to wait for the Promise of the Father. One hundred and twenty – out of over 500 people to whom He appeared after the Resurrection – made the trip of about ¾ mile to obey their Master and receive the power of the Holy Spirit. Acts 2 tells us that they were filled with that Holy Spirit. Filled!
Peter, who mere days before had famously denied the Lord, stands up and preaches. What a biblically-rich oration that was! And bold: “Repent and be baptized…Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” Three thousand agreed to it.
From that point on, as far as we can tell, those Spirit-filled followers were a formidable force for the Gospel. As Jones remarks, “Draw a line through the New Testament and on one side is spiritual fumbling, hesitancy, inadequacy, defeat, and on the other side is certainty, courage, adequacy, victory. That line runs straight through Pentecost.”
Today is Pentecost Sunday. I think that churches should treat it as the biggest day of the year, with Acts 2 preached and applied. Some deem it the “birthday of the Church”; immediately following that outpouring, the converted started meeting in the Temple and in homes and the Christian movement began to spread. In the congregation where I pastored for a quarter of a century, we celebrated with red balloons (tongues of fire!), a birthday cake, singing “Happy Birthday to us!”, a special speaker and special music, a Pentecost sermon, and dinner on the grounds.
Theologically, you could make the case that this is the culmination of what God purposed in His Triunity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Christmas is a miracle, of course, and without it there would be no Easter. Jesus’ sacrificial death and Resurrection is a cornerstone of our faith. But Jesus said His followers needed more, and He told them to wait for it. “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
Many churches hardly even recognize the day, however. Perhaps they come by this neglect honestly. Jones reminds us that if you go to the Holy Land today, you find that the Christian Church and the tourist agencies have commemorated a large number of important biblical events with a Christian shrine, plaque, or building. “But none has been erected in commemoration of its own birthday, Pentecost. Did it seem too remote to commemorate?
“At any rate, whatever the cause, there is, in Christianity, a lost chord, and that lost chord haunts us. Until we get it back our spiritual lives will be more wistful than winsome, more plaintive than passionate.”
Happy birthday, Church! Take some time to celebrate today for, filled with the Spirit, our best days are yet to come!
Matt Friedeman
