In the Jewish calendar, Pentecost followed fifty days after Passover, and celebrated the ingathering of the harvest. As well as its being an annual feast which celebrated God's continuing provision of the fruits of the ground, two events associated with Pentecost are of especial significance to us.
Following their redemption from Egypt, Israel were led through the Red Sea to arrive at Sinai. There this multitude of redeemed slaves were constituted as a nation. God's chosen people. This occurred at the giving of the law when Israel made the commitment, "All that the Lord hath spoken we will do ". Jewish tradition says that this event occurred fifty days after their flight from Egypt, and so took place on what later was to be the Day of Pentecost. Several hundred years later in Jerusalem, Peter and the other apostles began their work of witnessing to Christ on the same Day of Pentecost. In many ways we can see this as the beginning of the new Israel of God, a nation of which true disciples of Christ are part, so what can we learn from it?
The first century Day of Pentecost was a crucial one in the development of God's purpose. Christ had come, and had given to man a new revelation of God his Father. Many had turned away because they found his teaching too hard to accept, Peter, on behalf of the others, had declared that they would not go away because Jesus alone had the words of eternal life. Yet, when tested, the son of perdition had gone away into the darkness, and the other eleven had fled in fear and confusion. Christ had died and had been raised as the firstfruits, but was there going to be a harvest? So much depended on the way that those eleven apostles responded to their experiences between the Passover and Pentecost, If their natural fear were to dominate their actions, then Christ's life would have brought salvation for himself, but, humanly speaking, no one subsequently would have heard the gospel of salvation.
This small band were to be the witnesses who would take the name of Christ into all the world, just as the nation ordained at Sinai were to witness to the power and majesty of Israel's God. Jesus told the eleven that "repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his [Christ's] name ... beginning at Jerusalem. And ye are witnesses of these things " (Luke 24.47-48). The responsibility and the privilege of declaring this important message was entrusted to simple fishermen whose only attribute was simple faith. This is how God works: He works through ordinary men and women who by their words and actions show that they have responded to God's grace. Peter and the others were considered as ignorant and unlearned men. In the world's terms they were lacking in education, but they had knowledge and appreciation of what really mattered. Those same people who criticised the apostles' education "took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus " (Acts 4.13).
God's work is still to be done today, just as it was in the first century. God works in exactly the same way too. He is inviting us to share in His work. God knows who will respond to the words of His grace, and He could reveal Himself directly to that person. But he chooses to work through His children, men and women who want to share their hope of salvation with others. God sees the poor and the needy and the widows, and He can bring direct relief to their suffering. But He chooses to use His children to provide relief, encouragement and support. The royal law enshrined in the ten commandments given at Sinai was to "love thy neighbour as thyself. It was a law which was elevated to an even higher plane by the example and preaching of Jesus. It is through our efforts to fulfil that law in our own lives that people will take notice of us that we have been with Jesus.
So Pentecost is celebrated each year. We do not keep the feast as such, but we do hope to be part of the full harvest which the feast celebrates. We are part of the Israel of God which was constituted on that day in both Old and New Testament times. And God still calls us to work with Him in fulfilling His purpose, just as He called the nation of Israel to witness, and as Jesus asked the apostles to witness. These last days before Christ's return bring difficult times, but God's people have never had an easy life. But they have always had an extraordinary privilege. That privilege is to work with God to achieve something wholly good and true—to help realise a full harvest of good fruit, in themselves and in others. Israel at Sinai lost their direction because they kept looking at the wilderness all around them rather than the promised land ahead of them. Isaiah 35 says; "And the ransomed of the LORD shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away". The new Israel can succeed only by striving for what lies ahead, working together with each other in true unity of purpose and in the confidence that God is working with us.
"And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart"
S.J.I.