And when the day of Pentecost was now come, they were all together in one place.
—Acts 2:1
The margin says, “was being fulfilled.” When the day of Pentecost was being fulfilled.
In this very great matter of the presence and work of the Holy Spirit, we can only take one more fragment this morning. It arises out of this fulfilment that took place on that particular day.
It ought to impress us that it was on that particular day that God decided to send the Holy Spirit. There is nothing in the Old Testament that speaks of the advent of the Holy Spirit at any given time—no word that, at a certain time, the dispensation would change by the coming from heaven of the Holy Spirit to abide for the age. No word that it would be so.
But there is very much in the Old Testament that is gathered into that day and that advent. God chose that day because of the deep and rich relationship of things to that particular time.
When you think of it, dear friend, it is an impressive thing how God chooses His time for things.
When the Lord Jesus was about to be crucified, the Jewish rulers said, “Not on the Passover. Not on the Passover.” But heaven and God said, “Yes, on the Passover.”
The Jewish Passover was being fulfilled—fulfilled in a way, in a fullness, that they neither caught nor intended. But God said, “This is the time for the great Passover, transcending all others, the fulfilment of all others up to this time.” He chose the time.
He chose the time of this great dispensational change and movement: the coming of the Holy Spirit. It was by His decision that it took place at that particular time.
When all these people gathered in Jerusalem at their feast of Pentecost, they never imagined what would happen. It had never occurred to them. They had left their far-off cities and countries, mentioned in this chapter—how many of them!—and never, as they set out on the journey to Jerusalem, had in mind this thing that was going to happen.
For them, it was the keeping of an old Jewish festival, rich in meaning for them in history. But the Lord said, “Now is the time for something much more, much greater.” He chose the time.
Of course, we shall see why in a moment. It is like that. We are given to understand that the Lord is choosing the time, or is going to choose the time, for the coming again of the Lord Jesus.
That is another general statement, but it is said precisely that, when the spirit of Antichrist has reached that point of expression where, more than ever before in history, there will be a bid for world dominion, then He whose right it is will come to take it.
Antichrist will make the great bid for worldwide dominion, gathered up into one system, whether in one head it may be. Is there not today a bigger movement in that direction than ever? Many have made that bid, but it has been on more or less limited scales.
There are only two camps in this world today, really, and the battle is to break down the one to make way for Antichrist. That is, to bring up the dominion of this world under one head. The Lord will say, when it reaches that point, “Now is the time for the right One to have it.”
He hath appointed a day, in which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He hath ordained.
—Acts 17:31
God chooses His time, His day, and it is always very strategic, opportune, and full of significance.
So it says here, when the day of Pentecost was being fulfilled. He chose that day for the coming of the Holy Spirit, in Person, to govern this dispensation until the coming again of the Lord Jesus.
You know, Pentecost means “fiftieth.” Literally, it is the fiftieth day. That was important in the course of fulfilment, and that at once opens to us God’s meaning in choosing this particular day.
For all who know the Bible, even in a very simple way, know that the fiftieth year in the old economy was the year of Jubilee.
The day of Jubilee was the day when all who had been in slavery were released. All men and women who had been sold into bondage got their liberty on that day. All lands and properties which had been brought into bondage by debts, and so on, had to be released on that day.
If you had lived in the fiftieth year, you would have, if it were necessary, been awakened very early in the morning by a certain sound. Really, on that morning, as the sun broke through out of the night, the priests sounded the Jubilee trumpets.
They were the gospel trumpets. If gospel means good news, it was the sound of release for all captives, all prisoners, all in bondage—people and land set free. The trumpets proclaimed release: good tidings to the captives, the setting at liberty of them that were bound.
It was a day, therefore, of great joy for the prisoners, for those who had known limitation. God chose that day, or the meaning bound up with that day, for the coming of the Holy Spirit. Significant, is it not?
Indeed, that day in Jerusalem was, for many captives, a day of rejoicing, a day of liberation. The gospel was going forth over the whole world through its representatives.
Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and dwellers in Mesopotamia, in Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and Libya about Cyrene, and sojourners from Rome—the whole world was there.
The gospel trumpet was proclaimed in Jerusalem to the whole world as represented on that day: the good news of release for the world from its bondage. How strategic God was!
It was fulfilment of the old conception, but how much greater the fulfilment than had ever been imagined. I say again, when they came from far-off Rome and Cyrene and Libya and all these places, they never expected to hear that message God had prepared.
Now, of course, the message is quite simple for us. Pentecost—the Holy Spirit having come and being here as He is—represents that glorious liberty for men, that glorious gospel of emancipation from bondage.
When the little remnant came back from the captivity in Babylon, having known seventy years of bondage, the word of the Lord through His messenger was:
According to the word that I covenanted with you when ye came out of Egypt, My Spirit abideth among you; fear ye not.
—Haggai 2:5
According to the covenant in Egypt, “My Spirit remaineth among you.” Here they are, because of the faithfulness of God to His covenant and because of the abiding Spirit of God, out of captivity.
One little sidelight upon the great truth: friends, I am not sure that we appreciate our liberty in Christ sufficiently. You ought to read again that letter to the Galatians in the light of Pentecost, in the light of Jubilee—our liberty in Christ, one of our most priceless possessions.
Translated not out of an earthly Egypt, but out of the authority of darkness into the kingdom of the Son of His love: being fulfilled, then, is the gospel of emancipation for all slaves, for all prisoners.
The Lord Jesus is undoubtedly in the fullness of His ministry on the day of Pentecost. He had already said it, but here it is in fulfilment. He is here by the Holy Spirit in the fullness of His ministry, of which He said:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me;
Because He anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor:
He hath sent Me to bind up the broken-hearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives,
And the opening of the prison to them that are bound;
To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
—Isaiah 61:1-2
Oh, what an unfortunate translation we have in the words, “the acceptable year of the Lord.” No—the year of Jubilee of our God. Year of Jubilee! O God, the year of grace, the breaking of the law which binds the prisoners and has imposed bondage upon so many. The year of grace being fulfilled.
Another thing was very present in the minds of all those who were gathered in Jerusalem. What was it that they were there to celebrate? Well, for them, the Feast of Pentecost was linked with the giving of the law at Sinai.
They were remembering Moses going into the mount, God meeting him and giving him the covenant by the law to govern their lives henceforth. For them, the Feast of Pentecost was always closely linked with that great epoch in their history: the covenant and the law.
Sad and tragic history—ah, broken law. But the Lord knew what He meant. He meant something more than tables of stone written in granite. He had a deeper meaning.
The day came when the prophet Jeremiah was caused to say—you will read it in the thirty-first chapter of his prophecies, the thirty-first verse. It is always easy to remember: Jeremiah 31:31. It is an epoch, a great change.
Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah:
Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt.
But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord: I will put My law in their inward parts, and in their heart will I write it.
—Jeremiah 31:31-33
Now, we do not say a lot about that because it is so clear—simply clear—that that is exactly what the Holy Spirit came to do. That is the fulfilment of Pentecost.
You and I know it. Do we? Do we? Let me challenge every heart. Let me challenge old and young with this: Do you really know in experience the truth of Jeremiah 31:31?
If you really have received the Holy Spirit—which, as a child of God, you ought to have done—you are able to say, “I know what the Lord meant when He said that through Jeremiah. I know in my own experience that part of Pentecost, anyway.”
Because one of the very first things in the Christian life, when we are born of the Holy Spirit, is that we know in ourselves, without anybody having to tell us, what we ought to do and what we ought not to do—in a new way.
It is remarkable, very remarkable. Things that we did without any question—the way we behaved, the way we used to speak, perhaps dress—oh, in a thousand ways, that which we never had a second thought about before, we begin to get some sensations, some feelings about now.
Some question arises about what we do, where we go, where we do not go. We say we have a conscience about it, but it is another conscience that we never had before. We did have a conscience before, but now a new one altogether—a new set of laws that never governed us until this time. Is it not true?
I know it begins in a simple way. All of us remember the first time that we had a question about something that had never been a question before. Remember it, probably?
We remember that first time when, within us, the Spirit of God put His finger upon something and raised an issue. We felt uncomfortable, perhaps miserable—something we could not altogether explain. There was something that we did not feel was right.
We learned afterward that it was a very vital matter. We came to realize that the progress of our spiritual life was bound up with our giving heed to that. We stayed where we were until that found an answer. You know, all that is very true, is it not?
“Upon their hearts will I write, and in their minds.” The inwardness of the new covenant began on the day of Pentecost. Pentecost is the day of the new covenant. That is what it means to have the Holy Spirit.
May I say this? It is a grand thing—a grand thing—to see lives, especially, may I say so, young men and young women, who are in that way walking with the Lord, not having to have the law laid down to them by parents or preachers or other people.
They are just coming alive to these issues and being able to say, “The Lord has spoken to me about that.” If anybody mentions it, then they say, “All right, all right, the Lord has already touched me on that matter.” Is that not grand?
That is a sure sign, a sure sign, of the Holy Spirit within. Oh, for more of it! Oh, for more of it! This mighty work of the Holy Spirit on the basis of the new covenant.
If necessary, the Holy Spirit says, “Thou shalt not.” All right, He says, “Thou shalt.” That is, the Spirit is the arbitrator, the One who comes between right and wrong and gives His verdict in the heart—in the heart.
Pentecost is the day of the new covenant, and it is not right back there so many centuries ago. It is now. It is present, as the Lord says.
I close with this for the present. Pentecost, as you know, we have recently said, was the feast of the firstfruits—the time when, in the early economy, the husbandman went out, saw the first ripe grain, gathered it into a sheaf, took it home, made it into two loaves, and took them and laid them at the priest’s feet.
They were the firstfruits of the harvest, tokens of God’s faithfulness, God’s grace, God’s disposition to be favourable, and God’s intention to give all that was represented and signified: a token of the full inheritance, taken by faith, in the two loaves.
You know, in biblical symbolism, two is always the number of sufficient testimony. You have two; you have enough. The two witnesses—that is enough. Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I: sufficient basis for the law. If two of you shall agree as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done of My Father: sufficient.
Two loaves—a sufficient testimony. Well, the Lord Jesus, in death and resurrection, the two sides of His glorious redemptive activity, has now gone up into the presence of God, presented Himself, and been accepted.
He said to Mary, when she sought to embrace Him on that resurrection morning:
Touch Me not; for I am not yet ascended unto the Father: but go unto My brethren, and say to them, I ascend unto My Father and your Father, and My God and your God.
—John 20:17
Something happened. He presented a double testimony in death and resurrection to the Father God, and was accepted. That was in token of all those who in Him were represented and included as His full harvest.
No wonder the Lord chose those out of every nation under heaven to be represented in Jerusalem on that day—one representing the fruit of all the nations, attested by the Holy Spirit. Oh, wonderful! Very blessed!
Here, in a little gathering like this—very little ones—nevertheless, enough nations are represented, enough nations to be a token that Christ is the firstfruits out of every nation, every tribe, every tongue, accepted in token of a great harvest.
That is a world of encouragement in a day of frustration in the nations, a day when it seems like limitation and curtailment. But because He is there as the firstfruits of all that will be, the vision will be fulfilled.
A great multitude, which no man could number, out of every nation and of all tribes and peoples and tongues.
—Revelation 7:9
Ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands—beggaring language. The inexpressible fruit of Pentecost: Pentecost, the work of the Holy Spirit.
May we all be the fruit of the Spirit, really be the fruit of the Spirit—something presented to God.
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service.
And be not fashioned according to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.
—Romans 12:1-2
That is the Holy Spirit’s work and business. May He have a clear way in every one.