“In the last days it will be that I will pour out my Spirit upon all humanity declares God" Acts:2
Pentecost which is observed by most Christian bodies, has been for
centuries looked upon as the moment within the stream of human history that God
inaugurated something new, and this new operation of God within history is
viewed is the emergence of the Church as the visible evidence of this new
operation of God.
Confirmation of the Resurrection
There is truth to this view, however, what the glorious
moment, which we see as Pentecost, is rather , the confirmation of what we
see occurring on that glorious Easter morning fifty days prior ,which
is, that the through the Resurrection of Jesus the glorious incarnate
Lord is come from the dead.
That death could not contain Jesus and that the incarnate Lord is
risen. St. Paul tells us in his Romans Epistle that the resurrection proclaims
the divine identity of Jesus as God’s holy Son, Rom: 1:4,
and what we are able to view through the Scriptures is the open manifestation
of this eternal truth.
What is new, or experienced in a new way, is our participation
with our incarnate risen Lord. That is, Pentecost is about experiencing the
incarnation of Jesus who is now ascended into the Heavens.
“When the Day of Pentecost had come, they were all gathered
together in one place. Suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of
a mighty wind and it filled the house where they were gathered. Divided tongues
of fire appeared among them and a tongue rested on each of them. And all of
them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other languages
as the Spirit gave them the ability.” Acts: 2:1-4
St. Luke’s narrative tells us that a great number of devout Jews
had come from around the Roman world , and were witness to this amazing
manifestation of the Holy Spirit as they each heard the
Apostles proclaiming the saving acts of God in their own language.
These Jews asked the question “what does this mean?” (12b)
Upon All Humanity
St. Peter answers this question through the use of Apocalyptic
language found in the Prophet Joel as an explanation using dramatic imagery to
stress the power of the foreseen as something which cannot and would not be
contained.
“In the last days it will be that I will pour out my Spirit upon
all humanity declares God, and your sons and daughters will prophesy, and your
young men will see visions and your old men will dream dreams. Even upon
slaves, both men and woman. In those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they
will prophecy”(17-18)
St. Peter is explaining that what was happening there in the Holy
city of Jerusalem is the pouring out of the Holy Spirit upon all humanity, so
that they might experience the incarnation of the Lord Jesus.
This word proclaimed by St. Peter not only tells us what God has
done, but all the more it reveals God’s the sweeping scope of his divine intent
toward and for “all humanity”.
It is God, the Holy Trinity’s intent that “all humanity” experience the incarnation of Jesus, and
what we are witness to, in St. Luke’s account in Acts on the Day of Pentecost
is the manifestation of the risen incarnate Lord in the lives of his Disciples
for and toward “all humanity” as represented by the
Jews “from every nation under Heaven” at Jerusalem.
Jesus Not Found in the Temple
These “devout Jews” had
come to worship God in the Temple, but found him in the streets in the lives of
the Disciples of Jesus, not in religion, but in the lives of those who have
come to believe in Jesus, who see the truth that he is the incarnate Son of
God.
It is God’s intent that “all humanity”, “all flesh”, experience
the incarnation of Jesus. The whole Christian life is about coming to
experience the incarnation deeper and deeper in a personal relationship.
The people around us see the manifestation of the Holy Spirit
in our lives so that they can, as the Jews did ask, “what does this mean?” which provides Christians the
Pentecostal moment of sharing the Gospel about what our God has done for “all humanity” and they too can experience the risen
incarnate Jesus which is what our God has provide for “all humanity” .
We Proclaim
St. John wrote of his and the others Disciples experience with the
incarnate Jesus as being the motivation for the Gospel’s proclamation down
through the ages even from the very onset of God’s divine purpose.
“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we
have seen and touched with our hands-this is what we have proclaimed to you
concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testified
to it, and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has
appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you
might have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the father and with
his Son, Jesus Christ.” 1Jhn:1:1-3
This fellowship is what God has always intended for “all humanity”, “all flesh”. That we
all come to fellowship with him. This is the Gospel which is the message of the
collective voice of the Church. The Apocalyptic nature of that message is
powerful and dramatic and should be obvious to the world around us.
Through this relationship the incarnate risen Jesus is manifested
to “all humanity" in a most profound Apocalyptic way in the lives of
believers, which is the Church, in a powerful meaningful way. This tells us,
that it is vital that all believers in Jesus need to gather together; for
through one another we experience and manifest the incarnation in and through
each other and to “all humanity”, “all flesh”.
Through the Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit, the Third person of the Holy Trinity, is
the means by which Jesus himself comes to us as the risen incarnate Word of
life, the eternal Son of God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. Jesus
speaks to this truth of the manifestation of his risen life through the Holy
Spirit in the lives of his Disciples.
“I will ask the Father, and he will give you another comforter to
help you and be with you forever the Spirit of Truth” Jhn: 14:16-17
This comforter, the Holy Spirit, is the means by which Jesus is
come to us, that is, poured out on “all humanity”. The
comforter, the Holy Spirit’s coming is Jesus himself manifesting in lives of
his Disciples throughout the ages.
“I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you” (18)
The Holy Spirit brings the risen incarnate Jesus into our lives,
and produce the evidence of a living Savior to “all humanity”. Through
God the Holy Spirit, Jesus pours himself out, his very self, upon the flesh of
all, and flows out of the live of his Disciples to the “all humanity” so that they too can come to believe and
experience the risen incarnation, the purpose of all human life is to
experience the incarnation.
We each live, “all humanity” so
that we might experience the incarnation of Jesus. This why Jesus has come in
the flesh so that as St. John wrote “what we have seen and heard”,
that is, we have encountered in the flesh Jesus’ own flesh, and in
our own flesh, the incarnation.
Benediction: May we each and
all come to experience the incarnation of our risen Lord Jesus through the Holy
Spirit being poured out upon “all humanity” today,
tomorrow and forevermore. Amen.
Rev. Todd Crouch, Norman, Oklahoma
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