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Chapter 2: The Promise Fulfilled

Connect.

Put yourself in the place of the disciples. Jesus Christ, whom you have followed and for
whom you had abandoned everything to follow, had recently been crucified but appeared in
your midst and promised that a new day was coming soon. He promised to send the Holy
Spirit to live inside of you, but perhaps you really did not understand how that was possible.
After all, since the beginning of time, while the Holy Spirit came upon the prophets or other
men of God, it was only a temporary thing. Can you imagine what it was like to wait 50 days
until finally this amazing event occurred? Let’s look at this event more closely…..

The Promise Fulfilled

Fifty days after the Passover, all Israel celebrated a holiday called Shavuot. It was a
celebration of the presentation of the Torah (Commandments) on Mount Sinai. The holiday
calls for a renewal of acceptance of God’s gift of the Torah. It was a celebration of a wedding
between God and the Jewish people. The word, Shavuot means “oaths” and it is a validation
of God’s unconditional devotion to Abraham’s seed and a call for the Jewish people to
everlasting devotion and loyalty to God.

On the same day as the Shavuot began, Jesus Christ’s promise of the coming of the Holy Spirit to indwell
believers was fulfilled. Pentecost was a call to believers to an everlasting devotion and loyalty to Christ,
just as Shavuot was to the Jewish people. Let’s read about it.

Acts 2:1-4 When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2Suddenly
a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house
where they were sitting. 3They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and
came to rest on each of them. 4All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak
in other languages the Spirit enabled them.

This is the birth of the Church. It is the day that the Holy Spirit came to permanently indwell every
believer in Christ, just as He promised. And with the Holy Spirit’s coming, God introduced the world to a
new age and a new covenant --- the age of the Church with a promise that even “the gates of hell shall
not prevail against it.” (Matthew 16:18). God established something totally NEW and unique. He
“called out” all believers from the world to come under his dominion, and to represent Christ to the
world, and He equipped them with the power of the Holy Spirit to be faithful in their service to Him.
And with this new power, the church was launched into a lost world to obey Christ’s last words:

Matthew 28:18-20 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been
given to me. 19Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.
And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

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