Rabbi Schneider - Pentecost in the Hebrew Bible
We’re talking, beloved friend, about the Jewish roots of Pentecost. Now, when we hear that word us in different ways, right? I mean, if you think of the traditional Pentecostal movement, to them when they hear the word Pentecost, obviously they associate it with the giving of the Spirit, as all Christians do, but they place particular emphasis on tongues. Other people hear the word Pentecost, and they think of perhaps Pentecostal denominations like the assembly of God. But I want to go with you today deeper and talk about what are the true roots of Pentecost, and what does that mean for us today? How could we apply the foundation of what the Pentecostal experience is to our lives?
So we’re going to begin by going to the Jewish root, the foundation of this in the Torah, in the book of Leviticus that we call in Hebrew Vayikra, chapter 23. What we’re going to read here is that Pentecost, which is just the Greek word for fifty, takes place each year, 50 days after Passover. So beginning here, Leviticus 23:16, the Lord says, «You shall count fifty days to the day after the seventh Sabbath; then you shall present a new grain offering to the Lord». And then the Lord speaks about the type of offering that should be provided. But this was originally a feast of thanksgiving. It was an agricultural feast. It was a recognizing that the Lord was the one that had provided the harvest, and it was honoring the Lord as the Lord of life and the Lord of the harvest.
And it demanded an offering. It was a special time of a holy convocation where people came together and recognized it as a holy day. Every day, 50 days after Passover, which again where the word Pentecost comes from, meaning 50, Israel celebrated this. And Jewish people still celebrate it today all over the world. However, Jewish people don’t celebrate it as Pentecost. They don’t use that Greek name. They use the name Shavuot because Shavuot means a week or weeks, and this feast took place seven weeks, seven weeks and a day after Passover.
So Jewish people refer to it as Shavuot. Now, with this information in mind that it originates in the book of Leviticus chapter 23, where the Lord gives His seven appointed days, His seven mikra we call in Hebrew, the appointed days of the Lord. They’re not just Jewish holidays. These are the Lord’s holidays. This is how the Lord introduced them. The Lord said, «These are my appointed days,» and then the Lord lists them. First, the Sabbath, pointing back to creation, because he created the world in six days and rested on the seventh, and then he goes through the remaining holy days.
And by the way, everything that Yeshua did in His first coming, all the redemptive acts that He performed, He did to the day on these appointed days that are outlined for us in the book of Vayikra (Leviticus). He was crucified on Passover because He’s the fulfillment. He was buried on unleavened bread, symbolizing that He lived a life of perfect obedience. He rose from the dead on the Jewish feast that we call First Fruits, all in Leviticus 23. And I have much teaching on this. You could go there. I’m just making the point now that everything that Yeshua did at His first coming, He did an exact synchronicity with these holy days of Yahweh. And then the Spirit came, we’re going to see in a second, on Shavuot, 1,500 years after we read about the revelation of it in Leviticus chapter 23.
Let me say it another way. As we go to Acts chapter 2 and we read what happened in Acts chapter 2 2,000 years ago, when the disciples were gathered together in the upper room because the day of Pentecost or Shavuot had come, listen now, those Jews that were gathered in that upper room in Acts 2 had already been celebrating… I mean, not those exact ones because generations had come and gone. But Jews in general, Israel in general, had already been celebrating Shavuot or Pentecost, beloved ones, for 1,500 years. I want you to get that. Because a lot of Christians think that Pentecost is a Christian holiday and they look at it as something that’s uniquely Christian. And they look at it as like, you know, Pentecostal churches or things of that nature. But no, Pentecost is not first a Christian holy day. It was first one of the days that God gave Israel as recorded back in Leviticus 23.
So with that said now, we turn to the book of Acts chapter 2 where we read about what happened on the day of Pentecost. Let’s go through this together line by line. Verse 1, «When the day of Pentecost…» Okay, this was 50 days after Passover, exactly, right? «When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together…» These were 120 believers in Yeshua the Messiah. «They were all together in one place». They were in community. I want you to think about this. When the Spirit of the Lord came, He didn’t just come to individuals, but He came to a community of believers. This is important because a lot of times in the individualistic society that we live in today, and many of us that are Americans, we have a very individualistic mindset. We think it’s all about us. But think about this.
When the Spirit of the Lord fell upon the church, it wasn’t first just upon individuals, but it first came upon a community of believers. They were all together in one place. And this reminds me of Yeshua’s words when He said, «When two or three of you, when two or three of you are gathered together, I am in your midst». The Lord’s manifest presence, it comes to us in a special way when we’re in fellowship with other believers. I mean, think about church experiences. If you’re attending a local church, and I hope you are, you go to the worship services and don’t you experience something really beautiful and precious during the worship experience when there’s so many believers, whether your church is 20 people or thousands of people, when all of you together are in unison worshiping the Lord? Isn’t there a beautiful presence that comes? Doesn’t the Holy Spirit allow you to feel Him in a really special and precious way?
So I want you just to think about this, the importance to God of living together in community with one another. Unity brings life, division brings death. So they were all together in one place when the day of Pentecost had come. Then verse 2, «And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind…» I want to continue, but I just want to stress for a second that God is a suddenly God. I mean, there’s things that He does in our life that happen over a long period of time. Transformation is a lifetime of growing and experience. Many things that the Lord does takes time and takes patience. But I want you to also be open to the fact that there’s things that God does sometimes in an instant. He’s a suddenly God. He’s a suddenly God.
I want you to expect Him for miracles in your life. I want you to expect Him for sudden change because He does this in the lives of His godly and chosen ones at times. And that’s you and me that love Him today. «And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind…» It was powerful. «…and it filled the whole house where they were sitting». It was an immersive experience. It marked them forever. «And there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them». Power. A tongue of fire. It brings us back to Mount Sinai where the holy God of Israel appeared above the mountain in fire and in smoke, and the mountain shook.
«And they were all filled with the Ruach HaKadosh, they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues». But I want you to get this. When they were immersed and baptized by the Holy Spirit here in Acts chapter 2, and began to speak in other tongues, the tongues that they spoke in were not the type of tongues that the traditional Pentecostal movement or expression would be. Because in traditional Pentecostalism, it is said that a person receives the Holy Spirit when they begin to speak in a tongue that’s a prayer language. But the tongues that they spoke in in Acts 2, my beloved friend, was not a prayer language tongue. It wasn’t a tongue that was just between the Lord and them, which is, this is a beautiful thing and this is a gift.
Paul said he thanked God that he spoke in tongues, and he did it more than everybody. He wanted everybody to be able to have a personal prayer language, to be able to speak to God from the Spirit in an unknown language. But that’s not what happened in Acts 2. So the concept or the notion of somebody not being baptized in the Spirit unless they speak in tongues, that does not line up with the Word of God here. Because the tongues that they spoke in, which is where Pentecostal doctrine comes from when they say that the baptism of the Spirit happens when you receive your prayer language, that’s not what happened in Acts 2 when they were baptized in the Spirit. But rather the tongues they spoke in, beloved, were known languages that the one that was speaking in them did not know. It was like this.
If I got in the environment of Japanese people that could not understand English, what happened in Acts 2 was that the Lord would give me a supernatural ability to proclaim to them the Gospel in Japanese, which I did not know. So let’s understand. I want you to understand that the traditional Pentecostal theology is different from what actually happened in Acts 2. When they spoke in tongues, they were speaking in known languages that they had never learned for the purpose of proclaiming the Gospel in every language of those that were at that experience. There were many people that were gathered there. So to make it possible for every hearer to understand the Gospel, that was given supernatural gifting to reclaim the Gospel in languages that those that had received the gift had never learned.
So let’s continue. «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». So there’s all different types of languages that are being represented here. «And when this sound occurred, the crowd came together and were bewildered because each one of them was hearing them speak in his own language. They were amazed and astonished, saying, 'Why, ' they said, 'are not all these that are speaking Galileans? ' And how is it that we each hear them in our own language in which we were born? Parthians, Medes, Elamites…'»
I might not be saying all the words right. «Residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Cretans and Arabs». And it says, «And yet they were hearing the Gospel proclaimed, and they were hearing about the mighty deeds of God. And they all continued in amazement and great perplexity, saying to one another, 'What does this mean? '» How is it? What’s going on here? «But others were mocking and saying, 'They are all full of sweet wine». They just thought it was babbling. You know, it’s an amazing experience I had. Literal experience. I had a conference years ago that I was hosting, and I was proclaiming the Word, and there was a woman there from Peru that did not speak English. And I didn’t know how to speak Peruvian or whatever language that she had, but she heard me preaching in her own language.
So there’s two possibilities. Number one, that they were proclaiming in languages that they had never heard or learned, so that those that were there that spoke the languages could hear the Gospel and about the mighty acts of God. And the other supernatural phenomenon that may have been taking place is, the people that were there that did not have the ability to hear the Gospel in the language that the apostles knew were somehow hearing it in their own language, even though someone wasn’t proclaiming it to them in their own language. I mean, there’s just a lot of supernatural activity that’s going on here. So the Scripture says there, «How is it that we each hear them in our own language in which we were born»?
So this is a phenomenally supernatural experience. Many people attribute this to the birth of the church. Many people trace the Acts 2 experience as the birth of the church, when the church received power and they began to make disciples, and thousands and thousands and thousands of the church kept multiplying and spreading. And I want you to think about this. The birth of the church, get this now, was supernatural. Why am I making a point of this? You might say, yeah, of course. But why am I making a point of it? Because the growth of the church continues to need to happen supernaturally. If we want to see the kingdom spread through our lives, we need to have a supernatural mindset because the church was birthed supernaturally. Yeshua rose from the dead supernaturally.
The Holy Spirit was poured out of the church, manifesting Himself as a tongue of fire, giving them a supernatural ability to proclaim the gospel in languages that they had never heard supernaturally. The church is a supernatural movement. We’ve been brought into covenant relationship, my beloved friends, with a supernatural God. So if you want to walk closely with God, you’ve got to have a supernatural mindset. Some of us are trapped in our own mind. We make all our decisions based on the pros and cons. We equate everything to the rational. If somebody is too passionate for Jesus, some of you think something’s wrong with them. If some people trust God too much, some of you think, well, they’re not really using their common sense.
There’s a place to use common sense. God’s given us a mind for a reason. Beloved, we have to make a lot of room for the supernatural in our life. God wants to show up supernaturally. That’s how the church was birthed. The church is birthed, beloved, on the resurrection of Yeshua and the giving of the Holy Spirit, both of which are fully supernatural. So they were mocking some of them that saw this going on. They had no idea what the heck was going on. «But Peter, taking a stand with the eleven, raised his voice and declared to them: 'Men of Judea and all you who live in Jerusalem, let this be made known to you and give heed to my words. These men are not drunk, as you suppose, for it’s only the third hour of the day. But this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel.'»
And then Peter quoted from the Hebrew Bible. Remember, the roots of your faith are in the Hebrew Bible. Pentecost is rooted in the Hebrew Bible. And when Peter goes to declare to those onlookers at what was going on as the Holy Spirit fell, what did Peter do? He went back to the Hebrew Bible to explain what was going on at Pentecost. So once again, Peter stands up and says, «These men are not drunk, but this is what was spoken of through the prophet Joel». And then he quotes the prophet Joel. He goes back to the Hebrew Bible. This is why it’s so important for us, beloved, to learn the Hebrew or Jewish roots of our faith. This is why it’s important to have ministries like Discovering the Jewish Jesus and many others like it, because it helps us be grounded in an anchor of truth.
The Bible didn’t start in the New Testament, right? The Bible started back in the book of Genesis. It’s in the Torah. So here we go. Peter begins to declare from the words of Joel. «'And it should be in the last days, ' God says, 'that I shall pour forth of My Spirit in all mankind, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; even on my bondslaves, both men and women, I will in those days pour forth of My Spirit. And they shall prophesy. And I will grant wonders in the sky above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke. The sun will be turned into darkness and the moon into blood before the great and glorious day of the Lord shall come. And it shall be that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved'».
And I love the next verse here. «Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourself know, this Man delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death. But God…» Everybody say «but God» with me. «But God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power».
This is one of my main mandates, beloved, to challenge Israel with the gospel of Yeshua of Nazareth, just like Peter did at Pentecost at Shavuot 2,000 years ago. Will you join me in that? We need to lift up Messiah Jesus to the nation of Israel and Jewish people. And Discovering The Jewish Jesus has great strategy in what we are doing right now to reach Israel with the gospel. God spoke to me audibly, Acts 2:22, Tetrarch. I believe he said to me, I have given you governmental authority to challenge Israel with the good news of Messiah Yeshua and to reach them. And I’ve made you a governor in the realm of the spirit to reach Israel.
I want to ask you, beloved ones, from the bottom of my heart, if God’s bearing witness with you of what I’m sharing, would you financially support Israel? Because we have a lot of money that we’re investing to reach Israel with the good news of Messiah Jesus. God bless you. I love you. God bless you. I love you. And we say in Hebrew, Chag Sameach (happy holiday) to you. And may your season of Shavuot, may it be a season where God quickens you to understand how present He is to you by His Spirit. May you be empowered in His fire.