God’s House
Sermon Notes
The origin story of the Church
This is not just an “interesting” story if we are the Church. If we want to be a church, we need to really spend a lot of time on this origin story because it sets the purpose, the trajectory.
Last week, we discussed the parallels between this story and the tower of Babel, and this discussion gave us some key insights into some of the values of the early Church.
Dependent: without Him they could do nothing
Diverse: the Church started out as a multicultural, multilingual community
Decentralized: mission compelled outward, not drawn inward
As important the tower of Babel story and these values are to understanding Pentecost, there is another story that is even more illuminating (noun vs. adjectives). The things we talked about last week are descriptions of not definitions of a church.
Background on the day of Pentecost
Originally a harvest celebration
The Festival of Weeks, 50 days (or 7 weeks) after Passover
The Celebration of the first fruits of the grain harvest
Preemptive Thanksgiving
We celebrate after we have received; they celebrated before knowing the character of the one who sustained them (act of radical trust)
Over time, came to be associated with Moses bringing the Law on Sinai.
The people of Israel left Egypt on the morning after Passover (Easter Sunday).
They arrived at the foot of Sinai 40 days later, according to Exodus 19.
While the 12 tribes gathered around Mt. Sinai, Moses went up the mountain to hear from God.
While Moses was up the mountain, the 12 tribes were below, and the manifest presence of God fell (wind, fire, and qolot, usually translated thunder, but literally means “voices”)
10 days later, according to tradition, Moses came down with the Law, the covenant through which they could experience salvation and become the people of God.
That Day of Pentecost
Backstory
They had just spent the better part of the last three years in the company of a man whom they quickly came to realize was much more than a man, whom they had come to love as friend, respect and trust as Rabbi, revere as Messiah, and had been prepared to crown as King. He spent three years inspiring them, challenging them, frustrating them, confusing them, just generally making them more uncomfortable than they had ever been before.
Then, He died. More specifically, He was killed by those whose authority He undermined, whose ambition and avarice He threatened.
This, in itself, would have been more than passingly disorienting for them.
In fact, His death put them in the rather precarious position of having backed a failed revolutionary and false Messiah, a very dangerous thing to do at the time.
Immediately following Jesus’ death, their plan must have been to hide their faces and slink back to their former lives hoping that no one saw them going.
But, as we all know, this story was far from over. On the third day after they had hung Him on a cross, Jesus rose from the dead and spent the next 40 days showing them that He was alive and opening their minds to understand the Scriptures.
Then, He took them up a mountain and gave them these instructions to be His witness in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth, to make disciples of all nations.
He told them to go back to Jerusalem and wait for a gift that He wanted to give them, “power from on high,” He called it: the Holy Spirit.
Then, He left, ascended into heaven.
Upper Room
So, they went back to Jerusalem and waited, just like Jesus told them. (their waiting looked like prayer and worship)
Then, this happened:
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. Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?” Some, however, made fun of them and said, “They have had too much wine.” (Acts 2:1-13)
What does it all mean?
The Holy Spirit clearly wants us to understand this event in light of Sinai. So, what does it mean when the wind blew and the fire fell and the voices were heard?
God was there. That was a place where the veil between heaven and earth wore thin. A thin place.
You see, in the Old Testament, this is the kind of thing that happens whenever God occupies a space (burning bush, tabernacle, temple). This is how God moves into a house.
And, where ever God lives, is a connection point between heaven and earth.
A place of encounter
A place of restoration (the way it was supposed to be)
Key difference between Sinai (and the burning bush, tabernacle, temple)
In each of those events, God filled a place.
In this moment, God filled a people (individuals and a community)
Luke goes out of his way to point out the individual flames above each one so we wouldn’t confuse this as another moment when God filled a place. He didn’t fill the room; he filled them.
But, Luke also points out that it was all of them together, not just individuals but a community.
This gives us an important definition (the most important definition) of a church: a church is a people in which God lives by His Spirit.
What does this mean for us?
Profound, transformative intimacy with God.
“The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. “This is the covenant that I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will they teach their neighbour or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” (Jeremiah 31:31-34)
Power/authority/boldness on the basis of that intimacy
12 Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold. 13 We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to prevent the Israelites from seeing the end of what was passing away. 14 But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. 15 Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. 16 But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. 17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18 And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:12-18)
A call to holiness: don’t you know that your body (individual and collective) is a temple of the Holy Spirit
You are a thin place
19 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. (Ephesians 2:19-22)
Like the tabernacle where every curtain, every table, every candlestick pulsated with the power of God.
A compelling place
Another key difference between Sinai and Pentecost is that people ran from the presence at Sinai. At Pentecost people ran to the presence.
3000 died at Sinai for violating the holiness, 3000 were saved at Pentecost despite the fact that they had violated the holiness.
A place of forgiveness and reconciliation (to God and one another)
A place where heaven and earth meet.