PENTECOST AND THE NATIONS

There was very little delay between the physical ascension of Jesus, with his assumption of all power and authority on the throne of God, and the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost – just ten days. His earthly ministry had been wonderful, but now Jesus launched his new ascended ministry, no longer a ministry confined only to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel”, but a world-wide ministry to all the nations. He launched not only his world vision, but also poured out the enabling Spirit by which it was to be achieved. Two thousand years later the vision remains and the Spirit continues to be outpoured. Jesus is as active as he ever has been; he continues to see the fruit of the “travail of his soul” at Calvary and is satisfied. And he will continue until the nations and this creation are fully restored.


There are a number of background strands to the Feast of Pentecost, one major one of which is that it marked the beginning of the wheat harvest. It was a harvest festival, and an ingathering of first fruits. This thought was very evident in Luke’s description of the event in the book of Acts, a fact not surprising considering that he himself, a Gentile, was part of the widespread harvest that was being reaped in his time, a harvest in which he himself in fact was a worker. When he heard from fellow Christians what had happened at Pentecost he was not slow to pick up its vast spiritual implications, and especially its inauguration of world mission, world harvest.


Luke makes the point very clearly that at Pentecost “there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven” (Acts 2:5). He emphasises the point by actually listing some of the prominent nations. The largest part his account of Pentecost in Acts 2 is then devoted to how three thousand of this great international throng were gathered into the Kingdom by Peter preaching in the power of the Spirit. Here was an astonishing in-gathering, a real show of spiritual first fruits being displayed in the Temple area. These converts were a great prophetic statement of what was to come among the nations.


Similarly Luke finds real prophetic significance in the way in which the group of disciples on whom the Spirit fell began to speak out in “other tongues”. Though they did not understand the tongues themselves, the “Jews from every nation” quickly recognised the tongues as the actual languages of the nations in which they had settled. Here was a scene where God was being praised in all the languages of the world. No greater prophetic act could be imagined to make the point that a harvest was to be reaped world-wide. The gift of tongues was never a random “ecstatic utterance”; it was always (and still remains) a major prophetic sign of a time when God would be praised in every tribe and nation.


Nothing of the chaos and judgements that engulf the world in which we live will prevent the process of ingathering and restoration which Pentecost inaugurated, for Jesus continues to reign. When the fullness of the Gentiles is gathered in the ascended Lord will himself bring things to a close. Even if the Western world succumbs to a flood of secularism or worse, even in the midst of that a harvest will be reaped.


Our great calling at this time is to be caught up both in the vision of Pentecost and its empowerment.

Bob




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