Fairhaven Shorts 5-19-2024

A Miraculous Pentecost

And today on Pentecost, we celebrate the fulfillment of God's Word as given by the prophet Joel. So let's dig into this story, starting with the events in Acts chapter 2. As the scene opens, the disciples are gathered together in Jerusalem in obedience to Jesus' command on Ascension Day. If you recall from Ascension a week or two ago, when he told the disciples to stay in Jerusalem until they have been clothed with power from on high.

And so exactly, they did exactly that. They are in Jerusalem. Where exactly in Jerusalem they are, the Bible doesn't say. But it seems from what's described in the passage that they were somewhere near the temple.

And we believe this to be true because the house where they were gathered had crowds of people outside, people from all over the known world who were coming to the temple to worship for the Jewish Passover. And so the crowds passing on the street outside were close enough to the building to hear what was happening in the house.

The Birthday of the Church

But for today, we celebrate the arrival of the third person of the Trinity. Pentecost is sometimes called the birthday of the church, and rightfully so. And I kind of wish we had a cake. I don't know, we might have one.

I don't know. If somebody's got one downstairs later, I don't know. But it'd be cool to have a birthday cake today. Christianity, of course, grew out of the Jewish faith, and Pentecost is related to the Jewish holiday of the Festival of Weeks.

Pardon me, which is nothing to sneeze at. There we go. This is a harvest festival in the Jewish faith, 50 days after Passover. And the focus on the celebration was the giving of the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai.

And this, of course, is a very memorable time when God revealed God's self and God's plan to God's people through the Ten Commandments. So it's fitting that God reveals God's self even further on Pentecost through the sending of the Holy Spirit.