Sunday – December 15, 2019 Book of Acts – Acts 2:1-13 Pt 2 “The Holy Spirit in the Gospels”

Sunday – December 15, 2019

Problems viewing?


Word On Worship – Sunday – December 15, 2019

Leviticus 23:22
‘When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the Lord your God.’

As we saw last week, the Holy Spirit was active before Pentecost. In the Old Testament, we saw the Holy Spirit of God striving against sin (Genesis 6:3), enduing men of faith with skill (Exodus 28:3; 31:2-5; 35:21-35), empowering them for service (Judges 3:10, 34; I Samuel 10:6), and causing some to speak God’s message as prophets (Numbers 24:2; II Samuel 23:2; II Chronicles 20:14). But none of the old testament saints knew Him as the disciples came to know Him at Pentecost. The Pentecostal Person is no less God than is God the Father, and in the Old Testament was even more active than God the Son.

Pentecost was a divinely planned event; not an afterthought with God. The coming of the Holy Spirit was as much a part of the redemptive plan as was the incarnation, death, resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Pentecost was in the Old Testament in type and in prophecy. Pentecost was a solemn festival of the Jews. There was a series of seven of those annual feasts which, like the whole of Israel’s divinely appointed ritual, were “a shadow of good things to come” (Hebrews 10:1).

These feasts are set forth in order in Leviticus 23.  The first of the feasts was the Passover (v. 4- 5). This was the feast of redemption, reflecting upon Israel’s deliverance from her bondage in Egypt. The next was the Feast of Unleavened Bread (v. 6-8). It was closely associated with the Passover and lasted seven days. The third was the feast of Firstfruits (v. 9-14). There was no set date for this event since it came, of necessity, when the grain was ripe and ready for harvest. The fourth of the solemn feasts is called the feast of Weeks, or Pentecost (v. 15-21). The joyous season of the grain harvest lasted seven weeks, and on the day of the seventh sabbath, “fifty days” to be exact, the feast of Pentecost was celebrated. Now we begin to see more clearly the deeper significance of Israel’s solemn feasts. The Greek word for “Pentecost” means fiftieth, and it was celebrated the fiftieth day from the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. It was “the day of Pentecost” (Acts 2:1) when Jew and Gentile were made fellow heirs and of the same body by the Holy Spirit.

There is no record in the Bible of Israel observing the feast of Weeks until we read of Pentecost in Acts 2. The grace of God in Jesus Christ was to reach out beyond the limits of Israel, and Pentecost marked the beginning of the fulfillment of the divine plan, the Gospel into all the world. We should bow in humble gratitude and praise to God when we realize that the birthday of the Church was in preparation through every stage of human history.