75. An Eschatology Of Pentecost (End-Times Series Part 26)

Hello and welcome back to the broadcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf. This is episode 75 in eschatology of Pentecost Eschatological blue diamonds

All diamonds are beautiful and rare and they are formed as a collection of carbon atoms subjected to unimaginable heat and pressure under the space of time

Melding them into one of nature's greatest crystalline masterpieces that has captivated the eyes of man ever since Some diamonds such as the standard white diamond are easier to find they occur nearer to the surface of the earth in the alluvial

Deposits and within volcanic pipes, which makes them more abundant and affordable in the market

Other diamonds however, such as the elusive blue diamond are buried much deeper within the earth strata

Making them not only harder to extract but also rarer and more costly

Now in the same way every truth in the Bible is precious and essential some truths hang right on the surface of the text and they don't take a lot of digging to lodge them loose, but other truths

Take a bit more digging the reward for those peeling back the layers of all the scriptural strata is most

Definitely worth it and the reward is there for all who venture down into its depths and frankly

That's a good way of thinking about our passage today Many of you are going to be familiar with this passage and some of the truths that are

Existing on the surface and those truths are diamonds. They're precious and they're glorious and I don't want to minimize that at all

But if you'll grab your shovel and your pickaxe I'd like to take you down just a little bit further down below the surface and into the

Eschatological crust of this text as we hunt for the biblical equivalent of blue diamonds

Acts chapter 2 1 through 12 When the day of Pentecost had come they were all together in one place

Suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind and it filled the whole house where they were sitting and There appeared to them tongues as a fire

Distributing themselves and they rested on each one of them and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other

Tongues as the Spirit was giving them utterance Now there were Jews living in Jerusalem devout men from every nation under heaven

When the sound occurred the crowd came together and were bewildered because each one of them were hearing them speak in his own language

They were amazed and astonished saying why are not all of these who are speaking Galileans?

And how is it that we hear each of them in our own language to which we were born? Parthians and Medes and Elamites the residents of Mesopotamia Judah Cappadocia Pontus and Asia figra and Pamphylia Egypt and all the districts of Libya around Cyrene and the visitors from Rome both

Jews and proselytize Cretans and Arabs we hear them all in our own tongue speaking of the mighty deeds of God and They all continued an amazement and great perplexity saying to one another what does this mean?

Now to understand this text. We have to first consider what eschatology is and how this text is eschatological

Expanding our definition as We covered last week We're in a series on eschatology where we're working our way through the eschatological

Texts that are found in the New Testament and we find ourselves right currently in Luke's second book called acts this is gonna require stopping and staring at the various various eschatological passages in Luke's great book and Building a coherent in times theology now to do that.

We're gonna need to have a proper definition of what eschatology is first Eschatology is not merely about the final

Climactic moments in human history. That is a futurist perversion instead

Eschatology is about what life is going to look like During the final age of man

Let me say it again Eschatology is not about the last couple of events that happen right before the world ends.

It is about the entire period Called the end times that we are living in today

Eschatology is about how the history of planet earth in its final chapter will be brought under the rule and dominion of Jesus Christ and We're living in those days today that end time kingdom began

When Jesus Christ rose from the dead and poured out his spirit upon all flesh, which we are going to see in greater detail

Next week, but for now, it's crucial for us to understand that everything within the old covenant

All of the promises of God all of the types and the shadows are either going to pass away

Under the rule of Christ or they're going to soar to new heights and a greater climax under the rule of Christ in this way

Eschatology has just as much to do with fulfilling the past as it does about an uncertain future thus

The discipline of eschatology is trying to get at and understand how all of the old forms and norms are going to find their ultimate realization and Transformation in the new covenant that Christ has ushered in to say that in shorthand

Eschatology is how Christ ushers in his end time kingdom both now and forevermore

To that end. Let us explore a few examples from this text Beginning with the festal calendar

Pentecost and the festal calendar Pentecost comes from the

Greek word Pentecost a which means the 50th or the 50th day Referring to the fact that the miraculous outpouring of the

Holy Spirit happened 50 days after the resurrection of Christ on Easter Sunday Yet the origins of Pentecost are so much deeper than the events of the first century

They actually run all the way back to the time of the Exodus for instance Underneath the events of Good Friday Easter and Pentecost are buried old covenant feasts that are directly and chronologically correlated with what

Christ is doing Take for example the festival of Passover This feast is the first among the final three feasts in the

Jewish calendar year They're the three final feasts that a Jew would experience every year now during that feast a lamb was slaughtered for the people's sins and His blood was painted on the doorpost of every home throughout the region of Goshen where they were settled in Egypt So that the angel of death would pass over them now as Christians We look at that and we say that's about Christ as the final and the perfect lamb whose blood was painted not on doorposts

But over the mint the mantle of our own hearts Causing the angel of death to pass over us because now in Christ we've inherited eternal life

So Good Friday is really the culmination in the completion of everything that happened in the

Old Testament Passover now in the same way Underneath the events of Easter and Christ's resurrection was a

Jewish festival that immediately followed Passover called the first fruits in That feast which happened immediately at the end of Passover the people would praise and worship

God For the very first signs of the harvest that once more God had called the caused the seeds that went down into the earth and died and Sprouted and broke through the ground again that that God has again done that Symbolizing new life and resurrection from the dead had come once again to the people of God Every year they would celebrate that that new life had come when the plants would break through the ground the first fruits of the harvest in The same way when

Jesus rose from the dead During the celebration of this very festival He was not only claiming to be

God, but he was claiming to fulfill the Old Testament coveted covenant Right with precision and beauty.

He was the seed that fell to the ground He was the one who broke out of the earth and was the first fruit of a new creation

Well, that's true of both Passover and first fruits that's true how they correlate to the crucifixion and the resurrection but in the same way underneath the events of Pentecost was an

Old Covenant festival that must be explored if we are going to understand what

God is doing in Acts chapter 2 After the Passover and after the festival of the first fruits the

Israelites Basically hightail it out of Egypt the Pharaoh says get out

I don't want you anymore and they leave and they travel ferociously towards the Red Sea now after God's final and glorious showdown with Pharaoh at Red Sea the

Israelites continue on into the Sinai Peninsula where they're going to be led by God to Mount Sinai Where God leaves his throne in heaven and descends upon the mountain to dwell with his people the journey from Celebrating the first fruits in Egypt To seeing

Yahweh himself to send upon the mountain and deliver his law to Moses took exactly 50 days just like Pentecost now to Commemorate that arduous 50 -day journey

God established a feast called the festival of weeks It's Shavuot in Hebrew, which would become one of the three mandatory pilgrimage feasts that all

Jewish males were required to attend Once every year in Jerusalem now furthermore beyond just God Initiating a new feast at the foot of Mount Sinai within the ordinary calendar year of the

Jews Which is different than ours. This feast was the very last and the final feast of the year.

It was the final celebration Sort of spiritually symbolizing how all of God's ultimate and redemptive

Purposes have coalesced and brought them to this mountain where he descends and is going to live with them and dwell with them forever

Essentially what it's saying is is every year the people are going to celebrate the fact that the end of the matter

The purpose that they live for and exist for is that they are going to be the people who live and dwell with God The journey back to Eden every year has been completed at the feast of weeks or the festival of weeks because God has once again

Descended to dwell with his people That's what this feast is celebrating. It's the ultimate Eschatological reality of God coming from heaven to earth to dwell with his people

This is why the timing of Pentecost in Acts chapter 2 is so rich and so Eschatologically significant that it cannot be ignored all of the events that happened during Holy Week and Pentecost are

Tracking perfectly with these three Old Testament feast in the festal calendar and that's not by accident or mere coincidence.

God is purposefully Taking his son through each of these final feasts causing his son to enter into the reality of these feasts in order to show his people

That the son is the one who brought these festivals and feasts to an end because he is what they were pointing to all along He doesn't end the feast by executive fiat.

He could have done that He didn't he enters into the exact timing of the feast in the exact meaning of the feast in order to showcase that he is the point of each of those three feasts

So in the same way that God rescued his people from Pharaoh and the taskmasters of Egypt Jesus became the spotless land of heaven whose blood

Accomplishes more than the Passover lamb freeing us from a far worse tyrant than Pharaoh in Christ We've been set free from the wicked rule of Satan the slavery of our own sinful flesh and the bonds of death that once Accosted us.

He is the hope of Passover and he is the point that it was always pointing to in The same way after the

Passover He's the point of the first fruits festival being the one who broke through the ground Being the one to rise from the dead breaking out of the earth like the first barley harvest that the people were

Celebrating God for in this Christ the bread of life became the first one of God's new creation people to rise

He's the first fruit of that new creation and through his power he is bringing all of his people in every age and every century back to life out of the grave bringing them as fruit of his new creation and Then finally after 50 days

Jesus himself ascended to the throne of God and Sent his

Holy Spirit God to descend down from heaven to dwell with his people not at Sinai but at Pentecost you see unlike the

Old Testament version of Sinai where the people were were Shivering in fear and standing at a distance unable to even touch the mountain because it was so holy and so sacred and so set

Apart by God the Holy Spirit at Pentecost doesn't come at a distance He comes and actually dwells on top of the people's heads and in so doing

Christ brings about what the festival of weeks was been Has been talking about all along that there was an event that was going to happen upon the horizon where God Was gonna descend again and dwell with his people this time forever in this time

Not distant but close at Pentecost that eschatological reality came true

Now these events these three at least the crucifixion resurrection and Pentecost are not

Eschatological because they speak about what's gonna happen at the final end of human history. They've already happened

They are not eschatological because they concern modern -day war helicopters and Antichrist and mark of the beast in any of that These events are eschatological in fact because Old Covenant trappings were fulfilled through Christ's work a new chapter of Redemptive history began and it was that final chapter the final end time kingdom of Christ was inaugurated in these three events in Jesus's crucifixion and in his resurrection and in Pentecost Passover firstfruits and the festival of weeks reached their glorious triumphant crescendo in the person and work of Jesus He is our forever lamb.

He is our resurrection from the dead and He by his spirit is the one who ensures that God's people are gonna dwell in God's presence forever in Christ We're not waiting to see these realities come at the end of history

But they already have and they've signaled that we are living in the final era of redemption

Which means that these events are eschatological Now before concluding our time today

There's a couple of other examples that what Christ is doing in this passage that I want to show you that are gonna really illustrate this point the first is eschatological wind

While the disciples were waiting for the Holy Spirit to come in that upper room just as the Lord promised them

They were huddled together and hiding somewhere in downtown Jerusalem Now this made sense for a variety of reasons number one

Jesus told them to wait and they needed to stay somewhere. So they were staying there number two

This room was apparently spacious enough to hold a hundred and twenty of them and it was also private enough to not provoke undue suspicion number three

This them hiding and huddling in this little room was also crucial because waiting outside in the open

Was not possible They were in the town that was just that had just killed their master for Insurrection and they were looking for the disciples to kill them as well

So if you wanted to stay alive you needed to hide so it's understandable why they were doing so but yet while they were in the safety and the seclusion of the upper room

God himself brought the full fury of His fiery hurricane like breath, which is essential for a host of reasons.

The main one is theophanic Now when God physically reveals himself to the people of God in the

Old Testament scriptures He does so through a phenomenon called theophany Now if you're not familiar with the term theophany, it simply means that God uses material means to reveal himself to a people in a physical form

So God is using physical items to reveal himself physically Now notable example of this includes

God appearing as a burning bush to Moses or as a smoking pot to Abraham a

Cloud by day and a fire by night to Israel or even a sparring partner for Jacob Now in addition to those common theophanies

God often appears physically as a wind or as a storm cloud in various places first Since the

Hebrew word for spirit is Ruach. It's a brave breathy word for good reason that word also translates not just as Holy Spirit, but as wind and if we were if we realize that then the

Holy Spirit hovering over the chaotic primordial waters of pre -creation in the first two verses of the

Bible would count as The earliest example of a wind theophany in that God by his breath is hovering over the chaotic storm

Genesis 1 1 & 2 now a little more salient to our discussion would be how the

Lord himself appears During the Red Sea episode hovering over the set of waters, but not just hovering

Blowing with his breath Back the waves into walls with theophanic fury in that scene

God delivered his own people by his own breath Which indeed connects us to the

Pentecost where the wind comes into the room and the coming of the Spirit and all of those features but another wind theophany

Actually blows a little closer to the point of Pentecost Now if you'll remember just a few moments ago

I said that Pentecost is the Old Testament equivalent of the Festival of Weeks that we find in Exodus this festival occurred after Passover and after the firstfruits and remember it

Commemorated the time when Israel traveled for 50 days out of Egypt and into Sinai at the base of God's mountain

Waiting for him to descend him being their God and they being his people now when he did finally descend upon the mountain the text tells us that he came as a ferocious storm that shook the mountain a cloud descended from the heavens and it it shook the mountain so Fiercely that the people and the mountain itself trembled

Now in the middle of that storm cloud that lowered itself down upon the mountains apex was a wind that was so intense that it

Was described as God blowing Trumpets with the magnitude of his nostril breath in that precisely what is happening at Pentecost the twelve disciples like the twelve tribes of Israel are in an elevated place and they're waiting on their covenant

God to come down and Make his dwelling place among them and a much the same way that God descended upon Mount Sinai with a breathy storm

God filled the upper room like he filled the apex of that mountain with his glorious divine breath with one notable exception, however

Instead of the people being barricaded from going into the eye of God's theophanic hurricane

Christ the better Moses ascended up to his mountain He made atonement for our sins and because of that atonement

God would descend down and live with us forever and that way the wind rushing into the upper room was the

Definitive sign that God was making his permanent dwelling place with his people without restrictions and without distance

No longer would the people Be relocated to the periphery of God's presence and no longer would

God be relocated to the tops of mountains or in the back rooms of temples in Jerusalem But instead he would dwell in His people's hearts filling them with his life -giving windy breath number two eschatological fire

You will also notice that just like the wind that the Spirit also comes upon God's people at Pentecost as a tongue of fire

That set aloft each one of his disciples heads and did not consume them Now this should remind us of of how

God first revealed himself to Moses coming as a fire that did not consume the dusty wilderness Bush at Mount Sinai You'll also remember in the book of Daniel when the three

Hebrews were thrown into the fiery furnace and they are not consumed This is typical of God when he appears as a fire

So this is common but in addition to God appearing as a burning bush at Mount Sinai another fire theophany happens at that mountain

When God led his people out of Egypt It wasn't at him who appeared as a cloud to lead them by day

Which is a wind theophany and a tongue of fire to lead them by night wasn't that's a fire theophany

Wasn't it also God who when he got them to the mountain that his divine? Presence descended upon the mountain as a wind theophany and he also appeared as bursts of intense white hot

Fiery lightning at the apex of the mountain. That's a fire theophany so without belaboring the point here

God drew his people out of Egypt and Settled upon a mountain to be their God and for them to be his people by using fire and wind as a physical manifestation of his presence

Signifying that his spiritual presence was going to be with his people This is again precisely what happened in the upper room

The same God who blew his wind and cracked his fiery lightning on Sinai was now

Inhabiting the upper room with physical wind and physical flame and this time there was no safe distance between the people and their

God He was descending with wind and flame Directly on to them as if they were the new

Mount Sinai and praise the Lord Jesus Christ that this reality is true now

There's one final Old Testament reality that's going on in this text that Christ's kingdom will not only intersect but also

Undo and I want to talk about that now and that's eschatological Babel and the table of nations the first command in the scriptures for the people of God to be fruitful and a multiplying to spread out into the uninhabited world

Genesis 128 Yet under the perniciousness of prevailing sin the people staunchly refused the commands of God and they chose rebellion instead rather than spreading out and Carrying faithful God glorifying living to the remotest deserts in the deepest bogs

Sinful men multiplied their iniquities across the earth They huddled together in a single plane where they sat stubbornly in their disobedience

Now echoing their creator who said let us make man in our own image this gaggle of future babblers

Declared let us make a city. Let us make a tower and let us make a name for ourselves in This threefold repetition the people of the plain of Shinar said let us

Quoting God three times yet their hearts couldn't be any further from his Instead of making a name for God the entire point of our creation

They were consumed like Lucifer with making a name for themselves Instead of spreading out in obedience

They built a tower that so dominated the ancient skyline that no one could get separated from them

Genesis 11 for They erected in a sense a mud -brick skyscraper to ensure that no one not even

Accidentally ended up obeying God by getting lost and scattering on accident Ironically, however, the tower was so slight and unimpressive from God's vantage point that he described himself as having to come

Down in order to see it Genesis 11 5. I want you to picture God in this moment

Squinting and straining in order to see it as a sort of divine irony or maybe even sarcasm from the

Almighty then once God does come down and Scrambles their alphabets and causes them to become so mired in linguistic confusion that everyone ends up scattering

Anyway, that becomes a sort of another humorous aspect of this narrative that though they tried so hard not to do what

God commanded God actually ended up getting them to do what he commanded Ultimately, the result of Babel was all the peoples of earth were subdivided into 70 nations

It's called the table of nations at the end of Genesis 11 where the nations were separated by many languages and they end up scattering to the ends of the earth and For all of human history the nations have been under this scattering

Now I want you to think about what is going on at Pentecost and how this relates to the Tower of Babel Instead of God coming down to confuse the people's languages.

God comes down and unloosens the various tongues So that all the people will no longer babble pun intended

Instead of one people being divided into all the nations of the earth as was the case in the Shinar Plain in Jerusalem that day people from all the nations under heaven came together as one people and they were speaking one language under one true

King in Both scenes the on -looking crowd is confused and bewildered yet in Christ Everything that was afflicted and everything that was broken at the

Tower of Babel was now being melted away God was undoing the curse

Now we have to look at one more thing before we conclude and that's how signs work because if we don't understand that We'll have a wrong theology of what was happening there at Pentecost.

So let us conclude with a final section how signs work Again before drawing this to a close one additional element to this passage.

It needs to be dug into is How signs work if you've been tracking we've dug down under the surface and the layers the

Old Testament feast To see the eschatological truths that was buried within the festal calendar we went even further down into the landscape by understanding wind and fire theophanies and how they were

Eschatological events and we found different gems embedded in the text on that level Then we dug down further into the type of logical level looking at how

Jesus is undoing one of the most profound elements of the curse that we see at Babel by Reunifying the nations at Pentecost and by bringing them in under one language now

After we've dug four layers deep. We're ready to look for blue diamonds as it were when

God gives a sign to his people He gives it to encourage us because he loves us signs are blue diamonds in the

Bible He uses temporary physical means like water applied in baptism or fire mounted on top of the

Apostles heads Wind rushing into the room at Pentecost bread and wine at the Lord's table.

He uses these things to point to an Eternal spiritual reality that will never end the sign is not the reality

The giving of the sign is not permanent it's a one -time physical manifestation

That's pointing to a spiritual reality so while the physical manifestation of fire on top of the

Apostles head and Wind inside the chamber that they were staying in our singular non repeatable events the spiritual reality

To which they're signifying remains and it remains forever Every time a man or woman believes in the gospel a

Tongue of fire does not appear above their head and when does not rush around them and sweep them off of their feet the physical phenomenon has ceased but yet Every time a man or woman believes in the gospel the fire and the breath of God Absolutely descends upon them in the spiritual realm

Igniting them Fueling new life in them filling their spiritual lungs with the breath of God Every time a person is saved

This happens to them spiritually which makes every believer on earth a walking talking

Mount sign I filled with the fire and the breath of God We do not need the physical phenomena to continue in order to understand that the spiritual realities have come

Now in the same way the gift of this unifying tongue

Language that was spoken the city of Jerusalem that brings these various nations together

And they're all speaking the same tongue at the same time is a physical one -time sign from God That need not be repeated physically for us to understand the point in This passage

God was not encouraging an ongoing Pentecostal style tongue babbling that's gonna last for 2 ,000 years.

No Because the passage himself points to the fact that Christ has cured the babbling that was going on at Babel He has unconfused the languages instead of us speaking in some

Pentecostal nonsense The passage is communicating a physical sign from God That was a one -time event in Jerusalem where God communicated a powerful spiritual truth by the coming of his spirit that God had unloosened their tongues and He had brought together a fractured world through his

Son and While the physical manifestation of the miraculous fire wind and tongues does not continue to this day

The spiritual consequences of those events do God is going to unify the babble broken world through his

Son in Christ the scattered fractured world is going to be

Reintegrated again, the nations are going to come back in as one people washed with the same baptism feasting at the same table joyfully serving the one

King Pentecost Was a one -time physical event that showcases that God will do a forever spiritual work

He will bring the fire of his presence upon his people He will bring the breath of life into their soul and he will reunify the nations as one people under God conclusion

Eschatology is a much larger topic than what concerns the last and final moments of human history rightly understood eschatology speaks about the entirety of Jesus's end time kingdom the whole chapter the whole

Conclusion from Jesus's death burial and resurrection until today Rightly understood eschatology speaks about the entirety of Jesus's end time kingdom

It includes things that happen in the very beginning of his reign such as his Passover completing death his firstfruits accomplishing resurrection is

Daniel 7 fulfilling Ascension his Festival of Weeks closing Pentecost and his undoing of the curse of Babel Eschatology includes events in the

Apostles lifetime such as the gospel going out and advancing into the Roman world the gates of hell falling in the

Roman Empire the downfall and the destruction of Jerusalem that happened when the temple era was complete the

Sacrificial system was put away with and the priesthood was no more Eschatology concerns not just the events of 80 30 and 80 70 but it concerns events that have happened as the canon was closed how we were given a completed

Bible and how Jesus's kingdom eventually overtook the Roman Empire All the way down to the

Reformation that overtook Europe all the way down to where we live today Eschatology it does concern future events, but the

Majority of those events have already occurred the minority of eschatological events.

Are you still yet to come? more accurately Eschatology is the theological discipline that examines how all of the promises of God from our salvation and the redemption

To his worldwide kingdom will come to fruition under the reign of Jesus Christ God's Son And when you understand that You will not only see that you and I are living in the end times, but we're also in the final era of human history

This means that we are living under the final end time rule of Jesus That there are in time things that Christ has commanded us to be working on to be doing

That the Apostles were not only commanded to sit and wait for a season Once the

Spirit had come and upon them they were actually commanded to get up and go and do There's no sitting down after the

Spirit comes now in the same way Far too many people today treat eschatology is something long into the future

That's either irrelevant to their lives where they're standing today or something that they're waiting to happen in the future dear ones

Our end time King has come His end time kingdom is here and his spirit has come upon you

Christening you with the fire of God's presence and with the breath of his life For your end time service in his kingdom.

He has commissioned you he has commanded you He is indwelled you and he has filled you to be able to do the work that he's called you to do in these last days

With that do not be the kind of Christian who sits down and who refuses to get involved

Do what the Apostles did and turn your city upside down for Christ Start Bible studies post prayer groups do some street preaching be present and active in your local church

Get married to a godly spouse have children and disciple them and use your life To see his end time kingdom advance

Where Christ is not yet named and one last thing Remember what

Jesus did for you at Pentecost for a moment He made all the peoples from all the nations in Jerusalem that day speak in one voice

Let that be an encouragement that your work today is not in vain one day

Christ is going to use the work of his church to finish the job He's gonna make all the nations on earth one people under God indivisible with perfect Liberty and perfect justice for all

You and I are laboring to see that true and better nation come in full Even as the nation that we live in it's crumbling

Until next time God bless you. Thank you for listening to the broadcast Thank you so much for tuning in and following along with what we are doing

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