The Birth of the Church

Published by Stanley Pouw in 2015 · 15 November 2015

It is important to know what God does as described here. And it is important for us to understand what we are a part of, in being the church of Jesus Christ. Acts 2:1-3 says, “When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. 2 And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3 And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them.”

That is the phenomena that God designed to inaugurate the birth of the church. This is our story and our history. As we come to Acts 2, we will experience through Scripture the actual beginning of the church. In Acts 1, the disciples were waiting for the coming of the Holy Spirit; in Acts 2, He arrives. In Acts 1, the disciples were equipped for their ministry; in Acts 2, they are empowered for their ministry. In Acts 1, the believers are held back; in Acts 2, they are sent out.

First, there was the Old Testament, God speaking in many ways to the fathers by the prophets, establishing a true understanding of Him and His redemptive purpose. After the completion of the Old Testament, there was the arrival of God incarnate, the Lord Jesus Christ, who was made flesh and dwelled among us. And 33 years later, the next great event in God’s redemptive purpose, Christ’s death, ratifying the new covenant by the sacrifice of Himself.

And a few days later, the next great event, which was the resurrection from the dead by which God affirmed the satisfaction that He had in the sacrifice Christ had given. Forty days after that, the next great event was the ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ as He went back to heaven to be crowned and now is seated at the Father’s right hand, having accomplished redemption.

The next great event is this one in Acts 2, the coming of the Holy Spirit to bring the believers together and establish the church. John 7:37-39, “On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” 39 Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.”

By the time we get to Acts 2, Jesus has already ascended. He has been glorified, and now He sends the Holy Spirit. A new thing is born that has never been known before. Some-thing never seen in the Old Testament. Something promised in the New Testament, and even described by the Lord Himself who spoke of the church in Matthew 16:18. But the church up to this point has been a mystery, something hidden that is about to be revealed.

And this is the beginning of the church, what the church is and how the church lives and then this unfolds through the rest of the writings of the New Testament, even to the place the church will play in the final redemption and the establishment of the kingdom of Christ in the Book of Revelation. So here, we meet the bride of Christ, the church. Here, we meet the branches connected to Christ, our God.

Here we meet the people for whom Jesus is the good shepherd. Here we meet those who are part of the kingdom of salvation, ruled by the Son of God. The church is called a household. It is called a family of sons and daughters by adoption. It is called a spiritual temple with Jesus and the apostles as the foundation. But it is also called a body, and in fact, it is the body of Christ. This is the most unique identification of the church.

In the Old Testament, Israel is basically called a vine. You can see Israel as it is called a kingdom. We can see Israel identified as a household and a family. We can see Israel as a building that God is building. But the unique metaphor for the church found only in the New Testament is that the church is the body of Christ. It is the union of believers with Christ as the living principal through them all.

Not one nation ethnically, but Jew and gentile all one in Christ. The dividing wall has come down. Everyone is placed into the body of Christ by Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. This is what our Lord promised in Acts 1:5, “For John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” That is very important because Jesus is saying, “This is the baptism with the Holy Spirit.”

When you hear someone talk about the baptism of the spirit, think about Acts 1:5. Jesus referred to what happened a few days later on Pentecost. That is the baptism of the Holy Spirit. There is much confusion and misrepresentation of that wondrous work of the baptism with the Holy Spirit. It is Christ immersing us in the Spirit, which we share with every other believer and so together we are the body of Christ.

Jesus ascended 40 days after His resurrection. We are now ten days later when we read Acts 2:1, “When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place.” What Luke describes in verse 1 is history, completely at the discretion of God. The baptism with the Holy Spirit was a sovereign act of God based on God’s timing, not based on anything they did. The word Pentecost is a Greek word meaning the 50th in sequence or in order. To the Jews, it was the name of a feast that happened 50 days after Passover.

It commemorates the firstfruits of the wheat harvest in Leviticus 23. After the exile, it became the traditional celebration to remember the giving of the Mosaic Law, the birth day of the Torah, because it was 50 days after the Exodus from Egypt that God gave Moses the law. So the Holy Spirit’s timing is also very important because God decided that this is the proper day to fulfill images from the Old Testament.

And the key feasts really are pictures of the work of Christ. The first was Passover. That was in the spring on the 14th of Nisan, and Passover was a picture of the death of Christ. Christ was the ultimate Passover lamb, the one true sacrifice for sin. And God bringing the fulfillment of the picture of the Passover had His son die on the Passover.

That is why 1 Corinthians 5:7 says, “Christ, our Passover.” So the first feast of Leviticus 23 was the Passover, fulfilled in the sacrifice of Christ. The second feast in Leviticus 23 was the next day after Passover. And it was the firstfruits, the celebration of the harvest to come. This is a picture of Christ’s resurrection, which came after his death. 1 Corinthians 15:20 says, “Christ is the firstfruits of those who sleep.” Fifty days later came the third feast in Leviticus 23:15-16. It is the Feast of Harvest, this is Pentecost.

It celebrates the wheat harvest by offering two loaves baked with leaven. The crop is not yet fully in, but this anticipates a full harvest. This is why Pentecost is connected with firstfruits. It was a Feast of Harvest, not because all of the harvest had come in yet, but because the first fruits had arrived, which promised a completion. Pentecost is the day that the Lord sends the Holy Spirit, as a kind of first fruit, as the guarantee that our future inheritance will be completed.

Let me add that the Feast of Pentecost is the birth of the church as well. In the firstfruits festival the day after Passover, which pictured the resurrection, they brought bread with no leaven. Why? Because leaven represents sin. The first fruits festival celebrated the resurrection of Christ, so there was no leaven because in Christ there is no sin. However, when they brought their loaf at Pentecost, it had leaven. Because while there is no sin in Christ, there is sin in the church. That is the particularity of these images in Scripture.

All of that in the Old Testament in Leviticus 23 looks at this significant event. The Passover looked at Christ’s death. The firstfruit feast the next day looked at His resurrection. And then Pentecost 50 days later looked at the promise guarantee given by God in the sending of the Holy Spirit of a full inheritance yet to come in the future. So in God’s perfect design, since the early ages, the church was designed to be born at Pentecost to fulfill these typical predictions.

Ephesians 1:13-14, “In Him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, 14 who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it.” The Holy Spirit came on the day of Pentecost because of all of this. This is another sovereign act of God at the precise time and in the place and in the way He wanted it to happen.

So they are all together in one place, waiting, and on the day of Pentecost, verse 2 says, “And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.” Suddenly, unexpectedly, the church is born. Suddenly the Holy Spirit arrives, miraculous, divine from heaven. This is the proper origin. It takes its source from God alone.

Let’s look at the phenomena for just a minute. There came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind. The wind here, however, is not actual wind, but a metaphor to describe the kind of sound they heard. There is no wind, only the sound of a hurricane. And the presence of the breath of God filled only the house. They were completely immersed, completely baptized. That is what that word is intended to convey. Literally being engulfed with the Holy Spirit. This is the coming of the breath of God.

They are immersed in the presence of the Holy Spirit who then takes up residence in their lives. 1 Corinthians 12:12-13 says, “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.” This is an overwhelming transformation, a divine miracle.

So for the first time ever in redemptive history, a group of people who put their trust in the Savior is immersed in the Holy Spirit, drawn together in one body because they now possess the same spiritual life, the life of God through the Holy Spirit in them. Romans 8:9 says, “Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.” This is not something you work for, this is an essential component of salvation.

This regeneration is giving you a new life, and every believer is united with all other believers in the body of Christ by sharing the life of the indwelling Holy Spirit. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?” The spirit comes from God as a gift. “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” God paid a high price to place His Spirit in you.

The first time it happened on Pentecost, and then it happened in the salvation of every believer from then on. Suddenly, they hear this hurricane like sound, but there is no hurricane. And after an audible phenomena, then they see a visual one. Verse 3, “And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them.” Tongues that looked like fire on each person. It was not a real wind, and it was not a real fire. Each had received the Holy Spirit, their baptism had occurred.

This is not the baptism of fire of Matthew 3:11, that baptism of fire is judgment. This is the visible manifestation of the descent of the Holy Spirit. Why is it necessary to have a visible demonstration of the Spirit descending on everybody? It is impossible for them to know what has happened if there isn’t some sign by which they can know that the Spirit has come down and done this. The rushing wind would say something happened, but the individual tongues over everyone would show that it happened to all of them.

Do you remember when the Holy Spirit came at the baptism of Jesus to empower Jesus for His ministry that the Holy Spirit came down on Him in the form of a dove? And He rested on Jesus. Here, the Holy Spirit comes down, and it looks like small tongues, and something like flames resting on the head of the disciples, symbolizing the descent of the Holy Spirit and the baptism that Jesus had promised.

Now you will never lose the Holy Spirit because the He himself is the down payment on the future inheritance says Ephesians 1. So the Holy Spirit is God’s engagement ring, God’s guarantee, God’s down payment, God’s first fruits. You cannot lose the Holy Spirit and you cannot live without the Holy Spirit. That is permanent.

But the Bible does say in Ephesians 5:18, “be filled with the Spirit.” What does that mean? It means let the presence of the Holy Spirit dominate you. In the beginning they were completely filled and controlled by the Holy Spirit. Filled not in the sense that you would fill a glass, a static filling, but filled in a dynamic sense as you would fill sails that moves you along, like in the words of Peter, holy men of God were moved along.

The baptism of the Holy Spirit, you do not feel, but the filling of the Spirit you do. Because if you let the Holy Spirit take over, all the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22-23 you will experience: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control.” When all of those are your attitudes, you know you are being filled with the Spirit.

The challenge for a Christian is not to redo the baptism. That is when the Holy Spirit took up residence and that happens only once, that is not experiential. That is a divine reality like regeneration. The fruit of it, however, is the work of the Holy Spirit in us to control us for our good and God’s glory, and that’s something that is maintained by the means of grace and by our faithfulness. The filling of the Holy Spirit is the ongoing experience that we want to sustain.

Acts 9:17, the conversion of Paul, “So Ananias departed and entered the house. And laying his hands on him he said, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road by which you came has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” This concept of being filled with the Holy Spirit means that the Holy Spirit who resides in the life of a believer is taking over complete control.

Baptism grants the Holy Spirit, but filling means yielding to Him. Only when you believe are you to be baptized. But we are told to be filled with the Holy Spirit, and the results are laid out in Ephesians 5:19-21, “addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, 20 giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 21 submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.”

In Colossians 3:16, you have exactly the same instruction, only instead of saying be filled with the Spirit it says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.” So this means to be dominated by the Word which dwells in you richly, and that means to be obedient to his will as revealed in His Word. So the church is born on the day of Pentecost. And what signifies its birth is the arrival of the Holy Spirit. Let us pray.