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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“BE WARNED, YOU RULERS OF THE EARTH”

A Thought from Psalm 2



Thursday of this week is Ascension Day, the Day when Jesus assumed his rightful place at the right hand of His Father on the throne of God. Psalm 2, prophetically pointing to the ascension of Jesus, proclaims, “I have installed my King on Zion, my holy hill”. Before and after this proclamation, the psalm powerfully admonishes the nations: “Be warned you rulers of the earth”; “serve the LORD with fear”; “Kiss the Son lest he be angry”. Thus God speaks to the nations to respect Him and his Son “lest they be destroyed in their own self chosen paths”. The whole psalm relates the ascension to the nations of the world.


The Ascension underlines a vital truth we need to grasp firmly in this generation of ours; the nations and their leaders are ultimately ruled from a throne in heaven, not from any throne(s) on earth. They are held accountable at a heavenly court. The standard He requires of them is the standard of righteousness, and that is a righteousness that can only be learned from obedience to Him. The reward for trying to break the “bonds” of righteousness and turning their back on him to pursue their own selfish interests is to feel his wrath.


We are also reminded that God watches the conspiring and the plotting that goes on among the nations in their striving and scrambling for power, for hegemony and for control, and “He laughs,” one might say in paraphrase, “in utter disbelief at the futility of their efforts”. The rulers do not mock God, whatever their comments of unbelief; God mocks them.


The secular sophisticated intelligentsia of the 21st century dismiss such a view with impatient and utter contempt. They have no intention of letting God into any discussion about the state of the nations. To them He is dead. He cannot have anything to offer. They are, therefore, exactly the sort of persons to whom the admonitions of the psalm are made! And yet around them, piled high on every side, is massive evidence of the unspeakable deceit, hypocrisy, ambition, naked greed and violence of so many of those who rule the world around us, who have no fear of God, and who are in fact presiding over a world torn with tragedy, war, famine, disease, terror and brutality. They watch as the human self-destruct button is being pushed every day in this world of ours, with the main motivation of its leaders being personal aggrandisement. And still they refuse to acknowledge the majestic simplicity of the truth that God and His Son rule with judgement amongst the human beings he has created.


In the midst of this carnage, however, God moves toward an ultimate purpose when the nations will be given to the Son as an inheritance (Ps2,v.8). This is also a major theme underlying the Ascension. Each day, even in the midst of his judgements, thousands of people are in fact acknowledging Jesus as Lord and King, people who will become part of that totally new scenario when the nations are redeemed, and the ascended King brings his rule in all its fullness to the earth.

There are, of course, many other magnificent themes to the Ascension (just as there are so many magnificent Ascension hymns). But the Ascension vision of Jesus as Lord of the nations, as the enthroned “Lamb” who alone has the seals which open the future of this world (Rev. 6) is such a welcome vista in this increasingly tormented world of ours.

It assures us of an ear to our praying and of merciful intervention.

Bob




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“UNGODLY FREE-FOR-ALL”

The nation has been presented with an appalling pantomime this week. A large number of significant figures in all walks of life have been covering up their adulterous activities with legal injunctions and super-injunctions on the basis of their right to privacy. The media, and even the general public on Twitter, have been trying to rip off this legal cloak and indulge in scandal on the basis of the right of freedom of speech. What a commentary on the state of our society!


That there should be such widespread “affairs” is a shame on any society. Historically infidelity has, of course, always been there, a privilege for the rich, a squalid curse for the poor. One has to think only of the Restoration under Charles 11. Riches and fame seem only to encourage it, and the celebrity culture appears to prove that in our own day. What a mockery! “Sin is a reproach to any nation”. Ours is widespread and blatant.


That the legal system should be used to cover up such behaviour is, it seems to me, an abuse of law and justice. That cannot be right. It is there to expose and correct destructive behaviour. It’s almost as though the law is being bought. (How much does an injunction cost anyway, I wonder?). The exposure of unfaithfulness in society is one of the ways in which society can keep a restraint on those who undermine society by behaving in such a manner. We are all susceptible to the reproof of our fellows, and rightly so.


Scandal makes news and sells newspapers. It’s a money spinner. It does so because it panders to a very unwholesome streak in human nature – the love of gossip and the delight in seeing someone being brought down or humiliated. It has a nasty fascination. At one time scandal was actually frowned upon as indecent – not today – it’s now the real stuff of news! It can be nationwide, overnight.


One wonders which is the worse sin, the affair itself or the widespread indulgence, especially by the media, in the sordidness of the story of the affair. Every detail, of course, has to be minutely examined, every headline has to be a loud megaphone. Perhaps the greatest irony of the situation is that the media and the literary culture of our day are themselves the greatest influence for the encouragement of such affairs. They provide a never ending torrent of visual and verbal sexual aberration that is bound to encourage degradation.

There are sections of the press which maintain they do not want to scandalise in their pages but sincerely just want to report truth. I shall be ready to believe the sincerity of that only when I see a discreet report of a divorce reluctantly reported in low key in a remote part of the publication!

So what do the judges and Parliament do now about a Privacy Law? The cry is for a new one. But there are some things that you simply cannot legislate for. There is no law that can function without certain boundaries in moral behaviour. "You don’t kill, you don’t steal" – we can legislate for that. "You can’t gossip in public" – we certainly can’t legislate for that, if the gossip is true. We can only legislate for defamation of character where gossip is based on a lie.

We certainly don’t need a law that will cover up unpleasant activity; what we really need is a national resurgence of moral decency. We need a return to decency and to restraint. Moral resurgence calls for spiritual resurgence, but we have set our faces against that!



Bob




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