The day of Pentecost (1)

Sunday 23 May 2021

The day of Pentecost (1)

"John baptized with water, but you in a few days will be baptized with the Holy Spirit." Acts 1.5

They were 120 that day, gathered “in one place” (Acts 2.1), awaiting the fulfillment of a promise made by Jesus shortly before His departure (Acts 1. 4). The coming of the Holy Spirit on the disciples was necessary before they could go and preach the Good News far from Jerusalem. This mysterious place was probably the square of the Temple where the disciples gathered every day to praise God : “They were constantly in the temple, praising and blessing God” (Luke 24.53). The famous “upper room” where Jesus ate the Passover with His disciples has been considered by many, probably wrongly, to be the place where the Spirit descended on the disciples, 50 days after Easter (Pentecost means “the fiftieth”). The scriptures only state that the disciples met “each day by one accord in the temple” (Acts 2:46). If they were in the temple every day, it seems illogical to believe that the day of Pentecost was the only day they would have been in the “upper room” ! In addition, 120 disciples were gathered when the Holy Spirit descended on them, and 3,000 people, in the crowd that came to see what had just happened, became believers and were baptized. The temple is the only place in Jerusalem where all of this could have happened. What can we learn from this ? The temple was the place from which the glory of God had departed in the days of Ezekiel (Ezekiel 10.15-19), indicating the end of the first covenant between God and men. It is also here that God chose to begin the new covenant, His church no longer being the physical temple of the Jews, but the community of believers united by the sacrifice of Jesus, as He had announced at the Samaritan woman (John 4:23). And this is the time when the Spirit of God entered the lives of the disciples... and ours too !

Source (His Word for Today)