What is Pentecost?

 What is Pentecost?

The English word “Pentecost” is a transliteration of the Greek word pentekostos, which means fifty.  The phrase "pentekostos hemera" means fifty days and was commonly used by the Greek speaking early believers (who were mostly all Jewish, by the way),  in reference to a Levitical feast called Shavuot, or Festival of Weeks.  (Leviticus 23:15).  The holiday is also called the Feast of Harvest or Reaping (Exodus 23:16), and the Day of First Fruits (Numbers 28:26).  It was one of three times during the year that all males were required to appear before the Lord.

The word Shavuot means "weeks" in Hebrew.  The name comes from a set of instructions in Leviticus 23:16.  Beginning after Passover, the  people were to count fifty days to the day after the seventh Sabbath following Passover. The Bible describes Shavuot as an agricultural holiday (Jeremiah 5:24, Deuteronomy 16:9-11). Seven weeks were counted from the spring festival (Passover), when the people began to harvest barley, to end at Shavuot with the harvesting of wheat.

This counting of days is known among the Jewish people as "Counting the Omer."  An omer is a unit of measure equal to 1/10th of an ephah or a bit over 2 quarts.  On the second day of Passover in ancient times, they brought the first sheaf of barley, amounting to an omer as an offering to G-d.  From that day, they began counting the 49 days to Shavuot, when they would celebrate the beginning of the wheat harvest by offering loaves made of the first wheat to be harvested.  The counting of the days of the Omer is to remind us that all of our days are numbered, and it is our responsibility to make each day count.  It is customary in Jewish tradition to consume dairy products on Shavuot because the feast originally occurred during the milking season.  It is also customary to gather in the synagogue and read the book of Ruth, a story which takes place during the Harvest season.

No matter how it is celebrated, though, for both Christians and Jews, that 50th day, Pentecost, is a holiday which marks a watershed event in spiritual history.  While it isn't as well known as Christmas or Easter, Pentecost serves to celebrate the giving of the Law (the Torah) to the Israelites, thus setting them apart as G-d's chosen people.  It has spiritual significance today as a sort of "birthday" of the New Testament Church by the giving of the Holy Spirit.

Passover is celebrated among Jewish people as a symbol of their physical freedom from slavery and liberation from Egypt.  Shavuot, also sometimes called "Atzeret" (meaning the Completion) is  the celebration of the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai, and a reminder that the physical liberation from Egypt was not complete without spiritual liberation in the form of the Torah.   It seems contradictory that the giving of the Law should constitute spiritual freedom, but the law of G-d represented a path to blessing and salvation, not only from sin, but from extinction as a people!  Following the giving of the law, the Lord sent an Angel to go before the Israelites .  He told them in Exodus 23:22-26, "...if you indeed obey [the Angel's ] voice and do all that I speak, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries...you shall serve the Lord your God, and He will bless your bread and your water. And I will take sickness away from the midst of you.  No one shall suffer miscarriage or be barren in your land." 

It's quite a promise, and a very liberating one at that.  The Angel of the Lord led the people through Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites, and Jebusites.  Know of any of these peoples today?  Nope.  Because G-d said "I will cut them off" and "I will drive them out".  And He did.

There is much teaching, from a very early age, about the infamous 10 COMMANDMENTS.  These TEN are detailed in Exodus 20, verses 1-17.  These are a foundation, or summary of the basic principals of holy living, but by no means constitute the entire law that G-d gave the Israelites on Mount Sinai.  We have pretty pictures of Moses standing with two rounded tablets of stone inscribed with 10  perfect little sentences, but the fact of the matter is, G-d gave the children of Israel over 600 commandments (613 to be exact).  The chapters of Exodus following chapter 20 (and most of the book of Leviticus) go into detail about the rest of what G-d had to say during those 40 days and 40 nights that Moses was on the mountain.

Leviticus 23:1 says "… Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: The feasts of the Lord, which you shall proclaim to be holy convocations, these are My feasts"  after which the Lord went on to name 7 holy feasts.  Number four in G-d's list is the Feast of Weeks (verse 15).  Verse 21 concludes by saying that "It shall be a statute forever".  It is with this history in mind that we understand why (in Acts 2:5) we are told that “there were dwelling in Jerusalem, Jews, devout men, from every nation under heaven.”  They were there for Shavuot!

The greatest linking of these two holidays is marked in the souls affected by the event. In Exodus 32, we have the story of the Golden Calf.  Despite warnings from the Lord (through Moses) that He didn't want any images cast (Exodus 20:22 -  You shall not make anything to be with Me—gods of silver or gods of gold…) the people pooled their jewelry and household items to create a golden image to worship.  When confronted, Aaron tried to wheedle his way out of responsibility by telling Moses that he just tossed in the gold and a calf came out... but that's another story.  Moses was angered on behalf of the Lord and called out to the people for support of his righteous indignation.  The tribe of Levi joined him at the base of the mountain and he sent them on a mission to "let every man kill his brother, every man his companion, and every man his neighbor." (verse 27).  The Levites did as they were instructed and verse 28 tells us that about 3,000 men of the people fell that day.

Fast forward a couple of millennia to the celebration of Shavuot in Jerusalem, shortly after the ascension of the one called "The Messiah", who rose into the heavens on a cloud.  By this time, the Jewish people had been celebrating the giving of the Torah on this date for hundreds of years.  It was no surprise or coincidence that there was a huge gathering in Jerusalem that day.  So, at about 9:00 in the morning, that morning of Shavuot (Pentecost), things got really interesting.  While most of the people gathered there that day spoke Hebrew and/or Greek, for many of them it was a second language.  When the Holy Spirit descended on the apostles and they began to speak, what the people heard was not Hebrew or Greek, but their own first language, their native tongue.  Now G-d had their attention!  And then Peter began to preach.  At the end of his sermon , Peter told them to "be saved from this perverse generation" (sound familiar?) and verse 41 tells us that "those who gladly received his word were baptized; and that day about 3,000 souls were added to them.  It's a tragic and beautiful equity.

That Pentecost day is a landmark event in the life of the church because this is a sort of turning point in scripture.  G-d begins now to do what he promised through the prophet Joel so many years before (Joel 2:28-32).  He began empowering "all flesh" for ministry.  Prior to this event, the spirit of G-d was primarily only poured out on Prophets, Priests, and Kings.  The giving of the Holy Spirit on this occasion marked the beginning of an era where every single person has an active role in the Kingdom of G-d and every one of us is tasked with the health of the mission of G-d's people.  The giving of the Spirit in the form of tongues reinforces the wider spread of G-d's net to encompass all people as His People by grafting them into the Chosen body.  The mission of the believers took on a new multilingual, multicultural, multiracial significance on that day.  Up to this point (and for some years thereafter), the body of believers in Jesus was predominantly Jewish or Jewish converts, with a singular culture, a singular history, and one common language.  By opening the doors in this manner, G-d emphasizes his instruction as given by Jesus to his disciples in Matthew 28:19 to "Go...Make Disciples...Teach"  In order to reach all nations, a language and cultural barrier had to be destroyed.  The miracle of tongues on the Day of Pentecost was the first chink in that barrier, proclaiming the words of the Lord in every tongue and to every nation, representatively.

Although this truth does not necessarily mean that every believer will be gifted for every kind of ministry, it does imply that all believers will be empowered to minister in some way regardless of their gender, age, or social position.  G-d is calling everyone to service.  Historically, sermons about the Matthew 28:19 verse have focused on the word "Go", but honestly, the meat of the scripture is not to go, but to make disciples.  Merriam Webster defines he word "disciple" as  one who accepts and assists in spreading the doctrines of another:  a convinced adherent of an individual or school of thought.  In order to do this, yes, the apostles had to get up and go out, but their mission was to make disciples.  Through that avenue, the word of the Lord would spread across the face of the planet.  It was the first example of the popular phrase "Each one teach one".

Massive groups being saved as exampled at Pentecost are wondrous events and we have seen a few of these in our times.  There have been some great evangelists to rise up and they have been responsible for leading thousands to a life of faith.  But that isn't G-d’s plan to reach the entire world.  The Master's master plan is to involve all of us in the glory of saving souls.  Those large events where hundreds come forward are just accelerators in the scheme of things.   It's the souls that are won one at a time that will finish the great work and allow Messiah's return.