Pentecost.

The promise of a new day! The name Pentecost means fifty and refers to the fifty days between Passover and the day of Pentecost.

In the law to Moses, God required every Israelite male to go up to Jerusalem to celebrate Pentecost—to remember God’s promise of a new day and to confess his faith in the coming Messiah and the realization of that new day. On Pentecost every year God gave Israel a type of the day when the Spirit would come and with the coming of the Spirit the dawning of the new day.

On Sunday morning in Jerusalem, Pentecost was fulfilled, and the new day came. Christ, who had ascended into heaven, returned to his church to take up his abode with his people by pouring out the promise of the Spirit. And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy!

They will all become prophets. The whole church would be a church of prophets.

The Old Testament prophets prophesied that this day would come. Moses did. That happened, as recorded in Numbers 11:26–30, when two unknown men, Eldad and Medad, prophesied in the camp, and Moses expressed his wish that all the people of God would prophesy. Thus the greatest Old Testament prophet taught Israel to look for the coming of that day. All the patriarchs and prophets who saw in visions to the new day that was coming, to the restoration of the temple and the house of David, to the coming of a glorious kingdom of peace and prosperity, and to the coming of the kingdom of priests and prophets consecrated to God were seeing the coming of the new day, the day of the Spirit.

Among those prophets was Joel, who spoke of the coming of the day of the Spirit and increased Israel’s anticipation for the day when all the people of God would prophesy. Then on that day in the upper room, Pentecost came when God made all of his people prophets and fulfilled the desire of Moses, and God realized his own promise by means of the outpouring of the Spirit of Christ. And they all prophesied and spoke the wonderful things of God, so that the temple was resplendent after a long, dark night of ignorance with the light of the glory of God shining through the testimony of his church; and the temple that had long lain silent, cold, and sterile with the faithless perversity of that generation and its doctrine of man was again alive and reverberated with the sound of the wonderful things of God.

The risen Christ.

The Spirit.

Pentecost.

Your sons and daughters shall prophesy.

A wonderful thing! The promise realized! The age of fulfillment arrived to shine ever more unto the perfect day and the consummation of the covenant promise of God in the new heavens and the new earth, where there will be joy in body and soul and pleasures before God forevermore.

Lovely day!

Jesus had told his disciples to go back to Jerusalem and wait for the promise of the Spirit. For ten days they waited. During that time they elected an apostle to take Judas’ place. The risen Christ showed that he is the living Lord, and Matthias was chosen. Yet the new day had not yet come because he was chosen by lot.

Suddenly at nine o’clock Sunday morning, there came a sound from heaven as of a mighty rushing wind, and it filled all the house where the hundred and twenty were sitting; there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire that sat upon each of them; and they all began to speak in other languages.

Especially this belonged to the event of Pentecost: they all began to speak. And the multitude heard them speak, each in his own language: Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamians, Judeans, Cappadocians, Asians, Phrygians, Pamphylians, Egyptians, Libyans, Cyrenians, Romans, Cretians, and Arabians. All in their native tongues heard the hundred and twenty believers speaking.

They were all proclaiming Magnalia Dei, the wonderful things of God.

What did they sing?

Lord, thou hast ascended on high in might to reign; captivity thou leadest a captive in thy train!

Let God be praised with reverence deep; he daily comes our lives to steep in bounties freely given.

God cares for us, our God is he. Our God upholds us in the strife; to us he grants eternal life.

They heard, all of them, the wonderful things of God!

For of him and through him and to him are all things.

Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens; let thy glory be above all the earth.

Or, thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.

Some were amazed and wondered what this meant.

And others mocked! “These men are full of new wine,” they scoffed.

That was a very convenient explanation of Pentecost. Then the scoffers could stay untouched and unchanged in their lives, in their false religion, and in their sins. That “these men” were drunk meant for the Jews of that day that nothing had changed. Then the temple stayed. The veil, which had no doubt been repaired, remained hung before the holy of holies because the way was not yet made plain. It meant that the altar, the table of showbread, the altar of incense, and the laver likewise stood. It meant that the graves that had opened could be closed, and the sightings of many dead who then lived could be dismissed as the figments of troubled consciences. Then the priesthood and the people with all their lambs and their blood continued. Annas and Caiaphas stayed high priests who represented God. Worship as it had been continued. Life continued as it was.

That those men were full of new wine meant most importantly that the condemnation of Jesus Christ of Nazareth by majority vote had been good and right church discipline and that his premeditated murder at the hands of the leaders of the Jews had been entirely just. It was expedient that one should die for the people. Then the Christ of so many miracles and so many wonderful works and so many powerful words; the Christ of the farcical trial, of the crown of thorns, of Golgotha, of the terrible darkness, of the earthquake, of the rent veil, and of the opened graves stayed comfortably condemned, comfortably crucified, comfortably dead, and thoroughly buried. Then he was a dead Christ.

If those men were full of new wine, then salvation remained the work of man, as the Pharisees taught, or a vain illusion, according to the Sadducees’ doctrine. Then the ax that God had laid to the root of the tree of Israel would be withdrawn, and all would be well with their souls. The nagging consciences testifying to the deeds of their wicked hands could be ignored, then silenced, and finally seared with a hot iron. Then the calls to repent, to be baptized, and to believe were all nothing. Then the warnings that the day of the Lord was at hand were all lies.

Yes! These men are full of new wine. Nothing has changed!

Unbelief!

Unbelief always latches on to a convenient excuse not to repent and believe and to continue in its unbelief and other sins. And other unbelief is ready always to provide the excuse.

Unbelief did that with the prophets: “They are madmen or pessimists; they hate Israel, and they love Israel’s enemies. They are impostors. They are in the minority. Look how many other prophets contradict them.” And the multitude nodded in approval. Thus the prophets were conveniently dismissed.

Unbelief likewise slandered John when he came preaching and brought the revelation of the kingdom of God uncomfortably close to the Jews and spoke uncomfortable things to them and who in his very appearance was a testimony against their worldliness. John did not drink wine, as they well knew, so they said that he had a devil. But the effect was the same. John was easily dismissed.

They did the same to our Lord in his earthly ministry. When the bridegroom came, they said, “Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. He is from Nazareth, where nothing good happens and out of which nothing good comes. He casts out devils by the prince of devils, Beelzebub. He is a Sabbath-breaker, a rebel from the duly-appointed authority of the priests and scribes. He is a teacher of sedition. He is not worthy to be heard!”

They condemned him by majority vote! And the multitude screamed for his crucifixion and blasphemed at his cross.

And as unbelief did to the Lord in his earthly ministry, so unbelief did with the Lord’s ministry from heaven. Unbelief explained the divine speech of Pentecost as only the babble of drunken men. Quickly summarized and conveniently dismissed.

Man still does the same today. He has a word about Pentecost. Oh yes, because Pentecost is not merely an event that happened in Jesus’ day, but Pentecost is the entire New Testament age of the gospel of Jesus Christ preached in the whole world in the last day and hour. Wherever the wonderful things of God are heard, wherever Christ crucified is preached, wherever the truth comes, there Pentecost comes; and there unbelieving man has a word about Pentecost. A convenient excuse for his impenitence, stubbornness, and unbelief so that the truth that he hates can be quickly and slanderously summarized and easily and comfortably dismissed: “They are radicals; they are schismatics; they are rebellious; they are self-appointed leaders; they sit loose to the creeds; they have their own agenda. Let us pass on. Our house is safe from destruction.”

But Peter stood up with the eleven! “These are not drunken,” exclaimed Peter, “as ye suppose.”

Inconveniently for their dismissal of the truth, Peter pointed to the fact that it was only the third hour of the day, a mere nine o’clock in the morning. A stray drunk from the night before you might meet, but a whole company of a hundred and twenty men?

This is not that!

This is that which was spoken of by the prophet Joel. Hundreds of years before, during another terrible time of carnality and unbelief in the nation of Judah, God had raised up Joel. His name means Jehovah is God. An obscure man. People call him a minor prophet. Nothing that he spoke was minor. For he was a prophet, and as a prophet he spoke the word of God to drunkards and winebibbers, whether spiritual or otherwise.

Joel spoke of Pentecost. It was the day of the Lord. The day of the Lord when he came and visited his people. A day of salvation for the righteous, a day of rejoicing, a day of deliverance and freedom. A day that is terrible for the impenitent and ungodly. If that was not what Joel spoke, then Peter and the rest were drunk. But if that was what Joel spoke, then the day of the Lord had come, and Jehovah had come to his people for their salvation and for judgment. It was the last days. After these days will come the everlasting and endless day of rejoicing in heaven and of weeping and wailing in hell. Then there is reason for fear and consternation and trouble for the carnal seed who sit secure in their folly that their houses will stand forever.

Joel spoke of the day of the Lord as the day of Jehovah’s coming in the Spirit.

Most importantly, Jehovah came when the Spirit came because of who the Spirit is. The Spirit is God. He is the third person of the Trinity. The Spirit is true God, coeternal and coequal with the Father and the Son. The Spirit is revealed as God in all his works. By the word of the Lord were the heavens made and all the host of them by the Spirit of his mouth. He was present in the beginning, brooding over the creation to cause life to abound. By him prophets spoke. He led all God’s people in the land of uprightness and in a broad place of liberty. All the works of God are of the Father, through the Son, and in the Spirit. He is the Spirit in whom the Father loves his Son and who is the in-ness of Father and Son with one another in the eternal and triune life of God. The Spirit searches eternally all things, even the deep things of God. The Spirit is the consecration of the people of God to God in love.

The Spirit is a person. He is not merely the power of God. He is not merely an instrument of God’s will. The Spirit is a divine person. He is the willing, decreeing, creating, sovereign God. The Spirit knows, acts, searches, instructs, teaches, wars, witnesses, softens and hardens, blesses and curses. He gives life and works death. He assures and convicts. He soothes and troubles.

In the glorification of Christ, the third person became the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of the man.

Deepest mystery…

The Holy Spirit and the Spirit of Christ are one and the same Spirit. They are the same person. The Spirit was given to Christ to be Christ’s Spirit, who is so closely one with Christ that the Lord is that Spirit, and through him Christ comes to us in order that our God might dwell among us.

Profoundest grace!

That the Lord God might dwell among us! His beloved, his blood-bought people, consecrated to him. Christ came and died and obtained righteousness and eternal life by his perfect obedience. And what is that life that he obtained for us but life with him in the Spirit and thus life with God?

At Pentecost Christ poured out of his Spirit, and with him Christ gives life and all his heavenly graces.

He poured out because in comparison to the saints of the Old Testament we have much, while they had little of the Spirit. They certainly had the Spirit, enough to know God and to know their salvation and to know the forgiveness of sins. But little. We have the fullness! The new day is come. The night is past.

Especially the Old Testament saints had the Spirit confined among the special officebearers, the prophets, as those men to whom God gave dreams and visions in order to reveal to them his secret counsel and will for the salvation of his people. In the power of that Spirit, they were carried along to speak God’s word for the people and to the people, whether they believed or did not believe, whether they mocked or were humbled, whether they went on in their sins to their destruction or turned for their salvation.

At Pentecost Christ poured out in abundance and upon all flesh. All flesh does not mean every human being but every kind of people: Jews and Gentiles, men and women, young and old, servants and handmaidens. Thus this means that the whole church was filled with the Spirit of Jesus Christ. The Spirit was poured out on a hundred and twenty believers, not merely on the apostles. They all received of the Spirit.

And all from Christ, who by his incarnation, death, and resurrection satisfied the justice of God and earned perfect righteousness and the gift of the Spirit. Christ has the fullness, for God gave not the Spirit by measure to Christ. Only he who was God in the flesh can bear that honor and that glory. Only his death in the flesh was so precious to God that Christ merited that honor and that glory. He poured out of his Spirit, a measure distributed to each, and with the Spirit came many gifts and graces upon the church. The church always receives ofthe Spirit, some measure to each man and woman and child and to the whole church, of the Spirit that is Christ’s without measure.

And with the Spirit came the new day of the new covenant. With his coming the last days have come that shine ever more to the perfect day. A day of the assurance of Christ’s perfect righteousness accomplished; a day of liberty from the bondage of the law, from sin, and from death and hell; a day of joy and peace with God through Jesus Christ our Lord; a day of standing in grace; a day of the experience of salvation given with the gift of the Spirit. With the Spirit comes the covenant, fellowship with God, grace, peace, assurance, and the experience of salvation and of every blessing of salvation. What do we lack of salvation or of the experience of salvation when we have the Spirit? With him we have heaven now.

For Christ’s sake…

And what then of those who by means of their formula “faith and in the way of obedience” give to man’s obedience the power to deliver from the sorrow of guilt, to give the experience of salvation, and to give the assurance of salvation? They mock at the death of Christ and the gift of the Spirit as surely as those who said, “These men are full of new wine”! They rob for themselves the Spirit’s work to give Christ and with him to give joy, peace, assurance, and the experience of God as our God and salvation as ours. They are also devoid of the Spirit, for he would never permit Christ to be so dishonored, the work and glory of the Spirit to be so thoroughly robbed, and the promise of God to be so evilly annulled. For on the day of Pentecost, with the outpouring of the Spirit, Christ gave salvation and the experience of salvation as gifts and apart from man’s works of obedience.

For Christ’s sake…

Then they prophesied! That was prophecy! In that prophecy they spoke of the wonderful works of God and not of the works of man. That was Joel’s word of promise: “I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy” (2:28). The great mark of the Spirit’s presence is prophecy.

Joel spoke of prophecy in terms of the Old Testament: “Your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions” (2:28). He did not mean that today with the coming of the Spirit we will see visions and have dreams that have spiritual meanings or that communicate the word of God. Rather, in Old Testament language he taught that the church will become a church of prophets. During the time of the apostles, the Spirit gave to the church the gifts of healing, tongues, interpretation of tongues, and other miracles. But that ended with the age of the apostles.

Prophecy remains.

The great sign of Pentecost is not that men will heal the sick, raise the dead, or speak in tongues, but that they shall prophesy.

When Joel said that they shall dream dreams and see visions, he taught at the same time what a prophet is. A prophet receives the word of God. That is what it means to receive visions and to dream dreams. The prophet receives the word of God. The prophet receives. He does not invent his message, and neither is he self-willed in his message. He receives the word of God. That word is fully revealed in Christ and set down in the infallible scripture. If we will have the word of God today, we must have it from scripture.

Then the understanding of that word also comes from the Spirit; for in order to speak the word of God, the prophet must understand that word, be illuminated by the Spirit to grasp its meaning, and penetrate by the Spirit’s leading to its depths. To know, to believe, to understand, and to love the truth are the work of a prophet. To know, to believe, to understand, and to love the truth are also the work of the Spirit in the prophet and thus are also gifts of grace. Where the truth is received, there is the Spirit. Where the truth is not received but ridiculed and mocked, belittled or rejected, there is a spirit but not the Spirit of Christ.

A prophet must speak the word of God that he receives. That is what the very word prophet means. The prophet is always outspoken. That is hated today. Hated is not too strong a word to describe the attitude toward the prophet who is outspoken. Too much consideration is given to offending people. But the prophet is not told to care what men think. He is told to speak the truth even to the offense and the cutting off of many. If some do not want the word of God because they are worried about being offended by it or offending others with it, then by that very fact they reveal that they are not moved by the Spirit.

The prophet is a speaker of the truth over against what men say about it. Men say, “These men are drunk” or “There is something wrong with him” or “He has a devil” or “He is a glutton.” Over against that the prophet says, “It is not as you say.” Men say, “You cannot say that against those people.” Men say, “You cannot say that at this time!” And the prophet says, “This is that which was spoken of God.” The prophet speaks positively and negatively, or he is no prophet. Over against the words and wisdom of men, the prophet speaks the word of God that always stands antithetically opposed to the word of man.

Man always has his word about every situation and event. He has his word about Pentecost, creation, sin, the cross, heaven, hell, his neighbor, God, and things in the church. And the prophet is called to speak the word of God over against that word of man. The prophet is to be outspoken. When he is outspoken, it is not drunkenness or madness, schism or rebellion. It is the Spirit. The Spirit is the only explanation of prophecy, for such prophecy that makes man nothing and makes God everything is natural to no man. No man can prophesy or speak the word of God except by the Holy Ghost.

By prophecy then the prophet speaks for God. Prophecy is to be sharply distinguished from merely religious speech. Prophecy is to be sharply distinguished from merely speaking about God, about Jesus, or about sin and salvation. The prophet does not speak about God. He speaks for God. The prophet is an instrument in the hands of the almighty God and the Lord Jesus Christ. God lays hold on the prophet and speaks in and through him, so that he becomes the visible representative of the invisible God, whose voice is heard through the prophet and who speaks his word by means of the prophet’s heart, brain, vocal cords, emotions, lips, and tongue. When prophecy comes, God comes.

When God comes, the day of the Lord is at hand, and it is the last days. God judges in that day by the gospel of Jesus Christ so that all who repent, who believe on Christ, and who call on him shall be saved. And all who do not repent and who do not believe will be damned. When God comes and the day of the Lord comes, then God speaks for the salvation of his people and for judgment on his haters, haughty though they be.

That is the word of God to all about the coming of prophecy. Where it takes place, there is the Spirit, and there the day of the Lord has come. So also everywhere the word of God comes, there God has come, and there God speaks, and his word is never idle or vain and never returns to him void. God’s word is not idle or vain because working with and by that word is the Spirit of Christ. The Spirit who made the word of God effective to bring forth light and all manner of creatures in creation is the same Spirit who makes the word of God in prophecy effective to accomplish the eternal will and good pleasure of God—for salvation and damnation, for softening and hardening, for justification and condemnation, for sanctifying and creating enmity.

All flesh shall prophesy! Every child of God is a prophet who receives God’s word and speaks it, confessing it unto his salvation. Even infant lips God ordained to strength in order to silence the enemy and the avenger. And that word by those faithful lips proclaimed is the mark of the Spirit—the sure indication of his presence, as surely as mockery of the word and rejection of the truth are sure indications of the presence of another spirit.

The Spirit and prophecy cannot be separated. Whoever receives prophecy does so by the power of the Spirit. Whoever rejects prophecy does so because the Spirit hardens his heart. Wherever the truth is preached, the Spirit is the explanation. Whoever rejects the truth rejects the Spirit, and whoever mocks the truth mocks the Spirit. For Pentecost has come, and the Spirit is poured out, and with him comes the preaching of the truth of Jesus Christ crucified.

And the coming of prophecy is the fulfillment of the promise! God promised salvation for his people, the salvation that consists in their deliverance from sin and into his eternal fellowship in his covenant of grace. God promised the Spirit as the fulfillment of the promise by God. And at Pentecost God fulfilled his promise. He did not forsake his church or his word or his covenant, but he fulfilled his promise. When the Spirit came, he brought prophecy. By that power God saves his people. Where you see and hear prophecy, then you are experiencing the very fulfillment of God’s promise—both for salvation and damnation.

The promise of God and the fulfillment of that promise always depend solely on God and his Spirit. Salvation and the experience of salvation; salvation and the assurance of salvation; salvation and the enjoyment of salvation are the work of the Spirit, the fulfillment of the promise. That truth is at the heart of the message of the true prophet. He proclaims the unconditional promise of God fulfilled in Christ through his Spirit in the hearts and lives of his people in their generations, whether they are afar off or near, even as many as the Lord our God shall call. He declares in the name of God that all who repent and believe and call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved and their children. The prophet warns in the name of God that all who do not come to Christ in true faith shall certainly perish. For salvation is found in Christ alone and in no other; salvation is found in his suffering and obedience alone and in no other work or obedience.

When the Spirit comes, Christ comes, and God comes to take his abode with us and all his own who repent and believe and are comforted by the Spirit with Christ over against their sins. The promise fulfilled.

And they prophesy! Proclaiming the wonderful works of God.

That is disconcerting for the ungodly. So they dismiss Pentecost—then as now—as drunkenness, radicalism, departure, schism, folly, and wickedness. Woe unto all who mock.

The day of the Lord is at hand. That is salvation and joy for the people of God. That is a day of terror for the ungodly scoffers.