The Pentecost Story, Part 1
Waiting for the Promise
3rd June 2016
For three and a half years Jesus had wandered around Judea and Galilee, teaching the truth, healing the sick, raising the dead, touching lives, changing hearts, inspiring people with the kingdom of God. And then, at the Last Supper, He turned to His closest disciples and explained that He was going to be crucified. And they wept. And He said "It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counsellor [the Holy Spirit] will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you... when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all truth"(John 16v7,13).
I don't know how they reacted to that but I can't imagine them being happy about it, or finding it easy to believe that living without Jesus would be a good thing. They so loved him and respected him, they so believed in him, that it must have been hard to accept that things would be better when He left.
I've often heard people say thinks like, "Wouldn't it have been wonderful to have heard Jesus preach the Sermon on the Mount?" or "Wouldn't it have been marvellous to have been there when He raised Lazarus from the dead?" or Wouldn't it have been awesome to have watched him walking on the water?" Of course it would but Jesus said that it was good for them that He would go away, because then the Father would send the Holy Spirit. He was telling them that all they experienced when Jesus was with them was less wonderful than your experience of God through he Holy Spirit.
They must have wondered how anything could better that walking with Jesus, dining with Jesus, witnessing His miracles and hearing Him preach. But Jesus said that our experience of the Holy Spirit is better than that.
And then Jesus died, and three days of profound darkness, fear and confusion came upon them, because they didn't really understand. They only half believed him when He said He was going to die. They only half believed him when He said it was necessary. They hardly believed at all that He was going to rise from the dead, but He did!
Gloriously, three days later, He came to life, rolled the stone away from the entrance to His tomb, and presented Himself to His disciples, and everything changed. The moment they saw the risen Christ, they knew He was God. They knew He could do anything.
And the first thing He said when He met with his disciples was "Peace be with you" (Luke 24v36). They knew that Jesus comes to give us peace: peace with God, peace with others and peace with ourselves.
For forty days He appeared to them in different scenarios on different occasions, proving that He was alive. And at the end of the forty days, they were up a mountain in Galilee and Jesus said, "I'm going now. Don't do anything until the Holy Spirit comes". And they watched as He ascended to heaven on the clouds. Then they went back to Jerusalem and they waited, as He'd told them.
They waited but they used the time profitably - they prayed. They prayed for somewhere between seven and ten days. And nothing happened.
A hundred and twenty disciples prayed in an upper room for over a week, and nothing happened. And during that time they remembered, I'm sure, that there were times in Jesus' ministry when multitudes would come to listen to Him, to follow Him, and to watch Him do what He did. Once He had to feed at least five thousand of them because they'd forgotten to bring their lunch. And at other times the crowds largely deserted him, and He had hardly any followers. And they remembered the time He was nailed to the cross, and all but a handful of women deserted him completely.
As well as praying, the hundred and twenty must also have been thinking, "What can we achieve? What can we do? How can we make any kind of difference?" After three and a half years of ministry by the greatest preacher, the greatest prophet, the greatest miracle-worker, the holiest man, in the history of the world - God in the flesh, just a hundred and twenty were left. And I suspect one of them would have nudged his friend at some point during the week of prayer and said something like, "If only we still had the five thousand we might stand a chance of making a difference."
What are you going to do when you're the last hundred and twenty? You're going to obey Jesus. Jesus said "Wait", so they waited, and they prayed. And they waited, and they prayed. And I'm sure some of them thought, "Come on, Lord".
But Jesus had said, in Acts 1v8, "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth". And I'm sure all hundred and twenty wondered, "How's that going to work? Us?" But they did the two most important things any Christian can ever do; they believed what Jesus said, and they obeyed. They waited and they prayed.
And after a week of prayer, something did happen. The Spirit came. And the world would never be the same again.
I can't prove it but, probably, it was just before they were about to give up and go back to what they used to do before they met Jesus, that the Spirit came.
But God keeps His promises.