Pentecost

Pentecost Sunday

Pente- 5

Pentecost happens 50 days after Passover and is an agricultural celebration. The Holy Spirit was poured out on that day. 

2 Corinthians 3:12-18

There are things that are too intense to interact with directly. We can't look at the sun. The only way to make that possible is to either change the nature of the sun (which would be bad for everyone) or change the nature of us so we are the kind of creatures that can interact directly with the sun. 

In the beginning Adam and Eve spent time in God's physical presence daily because they were made to be the type of creature that could experience God's unfiltered presence. Sin changed that reality. Their relationship with creation changes and becomes hard, painful, work became toil, relationships filled with strife. Their relationship with God changed also. Our natures changed into the kind of creatures that can't be in God's presence without being burned up. 

The sun doesn't burn us or damage our eyes because it's mad at us. It's because our nature can't withstand it. When sin changed our nature God had to remove us from the garden so that we wouldn't be burned up by His presence. It was His mercy not punishment that removed us from the Garden of Eden. 

God put his spirit on Moses so that he was changed into the kind of creature that could be in His presence in the tent of meeting. Even the second hand glow of God's glory on Moses' face was too intense for others. 

Numbers 11 Moses tells Joshua that he wished all of God's people would have His spirit rest on them and prophecy. 

Jesus establishes a new covenant that changes us at the core; not through our works, but through His work. Jesus tells them to wait for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit didn't just rest on them like the prophets. He dwells in them and transforms them into beings that can't be in God's presence. 

2 Cor 5:17

1 Cor 2:17

This way of being connected to God is better than it was with Moses and the prophets because it doesn't fade. Even now when we look to the law there is still a veil, but when a person turns to God they are transformed into the kind of being that can experience God directly. 

Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

Freedom is not liberation from all restraints with no push back. The Biblical definition of freedom is the ability to live according to our design without being restrained. 

It doesn't look like becoming something you are not or being waited on hand and foot. It looks like doing the things we were designed to do. Do bear things. 

What were we made to do/be? We were made to be in God's presence.