THE SPIRIT OF PROMISE
This weekend we will mark the biblical festival of Shavuot. Known in Christian circles as Pentecost, it is often referred to as the birthdate of the church.
For many centuries it was viewed as the beginning of a new institution that had replaced or superseded the people of Israel. This was the understanding of most traditional churches for much of church history. The assumption was that God was finished with Israel as His people and we, the church, are the new and better people of God. For many Christians, they felt that God had disinherited His people and consequently wrote a “New Testament” in which He removed the blessings from Israel and showered them on the new Gentile church.
When Paul wrote his letters to the churches in Asia Minor, Greece and Rome, however, he did not view his writings as chapters of a new book called the “New Testament.” For the believers in the early church, the expression “New Testament” was not the name of a book, nor was it the name of a new religious movement. For them, it rather described a new spiritual reality which dramatically shaped and transformed their lives. The “New Covenant” described an experience that the Jewish people had been waiting and hoping for over many centuries. It was an integral fulfillment of Israel’s prophetic, redemptive expectations for generations.
The person who coined the very expression “New Covenant” was not Jesus nor the early Apostles, but one of the great Hebrew prophets of old – Jeremiah.
Jeremiah not only announced the destruction of Jerusalem and the Babylonian exile, but he also was one of the greatest harbingers of a glorious future restoration for Israel.
The most well-known restoration passages of Jeremiah are in chapters 30-33, where God affirms His “everlasting love” for Israel (31:3), and promises to bring them back to their homeland from the “north country” and the “farthest parts of the earth” (31:8). This process of Israel’s restoration is a message that needs to be declared to the nations; yes, even to the remotest places around the world, saying: “He who scattered Israel will gather him, and will keep him as a shepherd keeps his flock.” (31:10) God even affirms through Jeremiah that with the same determination in which He scattered Israel, He would restore, build and plant them back in the Land (31:28).
As the climax of this restoration process, God announces through Jeremiah something brand new that would go beyond the mere restoration of Israel to some past glory. God announces a glorious New Covenant lies ahead!
“Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah — not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” (Jeremiah 31:31-33)
The actual phrase “New Testament” is given to us through the Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible, compiled by the early church father Jerome in Bethlehem. He translated “new covenant” as “new testament,” and this expression has stuck within Christianity ever since.
However, New Covenant is in many ways a far better expression than New Testament, as it highlights more a relationship than a legal document. Jeremiah foresees for his people a new type of relationship that would be an “upgrade” to the covenant made at Sinai. On Mt. Sinai, the Lord God was giving Israel a law that, in principle, was flawless and spiritual. The challenge, however, was not so much with the law, but rather with the people. Israel—and with them, humanity—struggled to fulfill the commandments of God, such that King David cried out: “There is none who does good, not even one” (Psalm 14:3). And this promised new covenant would deal with the biggest problem of mankind—that of the human heart.
The main agent for implementing this New Covenant is the Holy Spirit. Ezekiel describes it in the following way:
“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them” (Ezekiel 36:26-27).
This announced New Covenant would be a radical transformation of the heart. God would write His torah (“law”) not like at Mt. Sinai, on tablets of stone, but on human hearts. And according to Ezekiel, this transformation of “hearts of stone” to “hearts of flesh” would be accomplished by the Holy Spirit coming upon His people.
It is in the light of this promised new covenant that Pentecost needs to be viewed.
“When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.” (Acts 2:1-4)
Unlike on Mt. Sinai, when God came upon the mountain in fire and gave Moses the law written on tablets of stone, there in the Upper Room flames of fire settled on human vessels. The result was the transformed hearts of the early Jewish disciples, and their lives were radically changed.
According to Jesus, this New Covenant transformation by the Holy Spirit is so radical, it would feel like being “born again.” Jesus made this famous statement to Nicodemus, one of the leading Torah scholars of his time:
“… unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3).
But the Torah sage was puzzled:
“How can this be? Can a man enter a second time into the mother’s womb?” (see John 3:4+9). Jesus responded with surprise: “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?” (John 3:10)
In other words, as a well-trained scholar in the Hebrew Scriptures, Nicodemus should have known this. The prophets were filled with promises of a divine heart transformation. Already, Moses longed for a national infilling of the Holy Spirit (Numbers 11:29), and he foresaw a time when God would circumcise the hearts of the nation (Deuteronomy 30:6-8) so that as a consequence Israel will keep His commandments.
In short, the coming of the Holy Spirit on that noted Day of Pentecost was not an unexpected new thing which caught everyone by surprise. It was something which was promised, waited for and anticipated.
Therefore, Jesus commanded his disciples to stay in Jerusalem to wait for the “promise of the Father.”
When the Holy Spirit finally was poured out on Pentecost, Peter arose in the temple courts and declared to a Jewish audience that this was the promise which God gave to them and their children (Acts 2:39). The Apostle Paul would later refer to the Holy Spirit as the “spirit of promise” (Galatians 3:14, Ephesians 1:13).
This means that the New Covenant and the birth of the church were not the disinheritance of Israel and transferring of a new testament to a gentile church, but it was exactly the opposite.
It was God‘s covenant faithfulness to His people Israel, to fulfill all that He had promised to them. As Gentile believers, we therefore should not look down on Israel but should rather be thankful that we have been included in the incredible blessing of the Holy Spirit which primarily was promised to them first and less so to the Gentiles.
Paul declared that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is “to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Romans 1:16). The same is true for the impartation of the Holy Spirit. It was promised to the Jew first.
We also need to understand that the vast majority of ‘Holy Spirit prophecies’ of the Bible are given in the context of an end-time restoration of Israel back in their Land (Isaiah 44:3; Jeremiah 31:31; Ezekiel 36 & 37; Joel 2:28; Zechariah 12:10-14; etc).
Today, we see Israel being restored at an incredible pace after 2000 year of exile. Israel is currently outpacing the expectations of many Christians who actually believe in her divine restoration.
We thus can expect God also to fulfill all the promises He made to them regarding the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. This needs to be our prayer as we enter into this season of Pentecost, or Shavuot.
Let us make this year’s Pentecost celebration not just another Pentecost like every year, but let’s trust God for something new – in particular for Israel.
This corona crisis is causing a global wave of prayer like never before.
There is an unprecedented worldwide expectancy for a new breakthrough in the things of God like I have never witnessed in my lifetime.
Let us expect God to meet us afresh this year.
Let us also be thankful for allowing us to be partakers of the amazing promises God gave to Israel and for including us to participate in the incredible blessings of the Spirit.
Let us invite the Holy Spirit to do His work in our hearts.
Allow Him to change and transform your heart.
If you have never done it before, invite Jesus in this Pentecost and ask Him to fill your heart with the Holy Spirit.
You will never be the same!
—by Dr. Jürgen Bühler, ICEJ President
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