19 On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” 20 When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. 
21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” 22 And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”
— John 20:19-23, ESV

Who’s afraid of little Ruth Hoog?  I am!

When I knew her, she was already in her 90’s, stood less than 5 feet tall, and probably weighed a few pounds more than a sack of potatoes.  She had a stern, German face, which on most days flashed a soft smile, until it didn’t.  The day her frown did not turn upside down was Pentecost Sunday.

Ruth had been a regular worshipper with us for the better part of two years.  She lived almost within walking distance from our church, and her failing eyesight wouldn’t allow her to drive across town to the Lutheran church.  So, she settled down with us for a while, until Pentecost Sunday.

What happened?  I took my text that morning from the Gospel of John, rather than Acts 2 or some other more precisely Pentecostal text.  It was a good gospel sermon, according to everyone, but Ruth.  She was normally very complimentary of my preaching, but that day she balled up a fist at me and said in anger, “You preached a gospel sermon on Pentecost Sunday.”

She never returned to worship.  Andrea and I visited her and tried to make peace.  She soon moved away and we have not heard from her since.  I google her name once in a while to see if there is an obituary, but I have not found one.  I hope she is still living and will come back one day to worship with us again, but I fear it will be on Pentecost Sunday.  

So, Ruth, if you are out there somewhere, or up there looking down from Heaven, here is a another gospel sermon for Pentecost Sunday.

Pentecost Sunday is a Celebration of Pentecost

Pentecost was originally an Old Testament celebration, one of three key festivals on the Jewish calendar.  The Feast of Passover in the Spring remembers the fateful night of the tenth plague in Egypt that released the Israelites from slavery and bound them for the promised land.  Marking the fiftieth day after the Exodus is the Feast of Pentecost, which means fiftieth.  That was the day Moses came down from Mt. Sinai with the Ten Commandments.  The finale of the festivals is in the Fall, the Feast of Tabernacles, a commemoration of the wilderness wanderings between Egypt and Israel.  It is a close companion to Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, a celebration of sins forgiven.

These festivals give us the gospel according to the Old Covenant.  In Passover, God delivers His people out of slavery to sin by the shed blood of the Lamb.  In Pentecost, God watches over His people, struggling to keep the Law and often breaking it, as they wander through the wilderness of this present world.  In Tabernacles and Yom Kippur, God’s people come home, shed those earthly tabernacles, with all of their sins forgiven, fully alive and forever free.

Passover is justification.  Pentecost is sanctification.  Tabernacles is glorification.  Sorry, Ruth, but an Old Testament Pentecost sermon would have to be a gospel sermon, for it fits in perfectly with the good news of God’s grand plan of salvation.  

Pentecost Sunday is a Celebration of Sunday

As me move into the New Testament, there is a new foundation laid for celebrating Pentecost on a certain Sunday.  The events described by our text today took place on “the first day of the week,” on a Sunday.  It was Resurrection Sunday, the third day after the crucifixion of Christ.  

Jesus is alive, appearing with His disciples in the same upper room from which they had left to begin that long walk to the cross.  He had promised He would come back from the dead and sup with them again in the kingdom of God.  On Resurrection Sunday, the King and kingdom had come, the New Covenant church was inaugurated, and our purpose as a church is realized.  Every Sunday is a time to worship and proclaim“peace,” by grace through faith in Christ, and to equip ourselves to go out and share Christ with the world, “As the Father has sent Me, even so I am sending you.”  

In order to properly worship God and to empower our witness for God, Jesus said we must “receive the Holy Spirit.”  This was the first Resurrection Sunday.  Fifty days later came the first Pentecost Sunday.  Both are about the gospel, first received and then shared.

Pentecost Sunday did come, true to it’s name, in conjunction with the true Passover, on the fiftieth day after the second day after the crucifixion of The Lamb.  Seven weeks and a day after that fateful Saturday when Jesus lay silently in the tomb, Pentecost Sunday came.  

So why are we in John 20 today instead of Acts 2?  Because this text tells us about the Pentecost before the Pentecost, and Pentecost after the Pentecost, because Pentecost is first and finally a celebration of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  

Sorry, Ruth?!  Pentecost Sunday will always be about the gospel.  This is because Pentecost Sunday is about the person who gives us the gospel.  The person who gives us the gospel and empowers us to give it to others, is God, God the Holy Spirit.

Pentecost Sunday is a Celebration of the Holy Spirit

Pentecost Sunday serves to remind us that God the Father sent God the Son to tell us to “receive [God] the Holy Spirit.”  Thank God for Pentecost.  Thank God for Sunday.  Most of all, thank God for God.  

Theologically, to “receive the Holy Spirit” is to receive God.  The Old Testament teaches us there is only one true and living God, immutably.  The New Testament reveals the one God is three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, incomparably.  You cannot have one person without all three, because all three are one.  So whenever you accepted God and God’s salvation into your life, you received the Holy Spirit.

You cannot have the Father without the Son, “No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also (ref. 1 John 1:23).  You cannot belong to the Son without having the Spirit, because “anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to [Christ] (ref. Romans 8:9).”  When you received God, you received the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit is God.

Salvation culminates first when God the Father chooses you to be saved.  Next, God the Father sent God the Son to live a perfect life on earth, then give up that life on the cross as a sacrifice for sinners.  Then, salvation comes to you personally as God the Father and God the Son send God the Holy Spirit to you to regenerate you, or cause you to be born again, by granting repentance and faith unto eternal life.  “[God] saved us … by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit” (ref. Titus 3:5).  

So why does Jesus tell His disciples, who had already repented and believed in Him, to “receive the Holy Spirit?”  He didn’t, exactly.  The Greek language of the New Testament is much more nuanced and layered than English.

Exegetically, Jesus spoke an imperative verb, a commandment, a must.  Furthermore, the imperative verb is spoken and written in the aorist voice and indicative mood.  This speaks of past action with present implications and ongoing ramifications.  

Jesus was not giving an altar call for unbelievers.  Jesus was not tantalizing saved people with a sensational opportunity for some second blessing.  Jesus was simply declaring a true and living reality that already existed, needed to be exercised, and will always be available for true believers.  This means Jesus looked at the first church members right in the eyes and said four things:

“Peace be with you.”  True Christians had, have, and will always enjoy a permanent peace with God.  “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (ref. Romans 5:1).  

“As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.”  As Jesus completed the mission the Father gave Him to do, so we must now complete the mission Jesus has sent His church to do, which is to take the gospel with our lives and lips into the world in which we live.  

“Receive the Holy Spirit.”  They had, in the past.  They needed to, in the present.  And any evangelistic success in the future was dependent upon their embrace of the Holy Spirit.  Now that you are saved, embrace and be filled with the Holy Spirit.  Go forward continually, with the person and power of the Holy Spirit, to live holy lives and share the holy gospel, offering forgiveness of sin and everlasting life.  

“If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”  In other words, when you reflect the gospel in worship or share the gospel in person, and someone accepts it, they are forgiven and welcomed into the church.  If they reject the gospel, or offer a fake response, they remain lost and outside the true church.  

Christians cannot be Christians and the church cannot be the church unless we have received, presently depend upon, and make plans for the future with the person and power of the Holy Spirit, “Who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified” (Nicene Creed).

Pentecost Sunday is a Celebration of the Gospel

Pentecost Sunday is about the Holy Spirit.  But it is also about the gospel.  It is about how the same Holy Spirit who enabled us to receive the gospel empowers us to share it.  

So there, I’ve done it again.  I’ve preached a gospel sermon on Pentecost Sunday.  So if you are out there, or up there, please forgive me, Ruth Hoog!