John 7:39

Sisters and brothers in Christ,

In five days, we’ll celebrate Pentecost, the Sunday on which the ascended and glorified Christ gave the Holy Spirit to his church. As we look forward to that day, this evening’s Bible passage is John 7:39: “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.”

This verse can easily be misunderstood to mean that Pentecost was the Holy Spirit’s first appearance on the global stage or, to put it another way, that it was the Spirit’s first active involvement in the history of salvation. This would be to greatly underestimate the breadth and extent of God’s gracious love. The Old Testament, as we shall see, makes it clear that the Spirit had been active all along. So what did John mean when he wrote, “As yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified”?

I’ll try to answer this question, as best as I can, over two evenings. Today, I’ll briefly note some of the many ways in which the Holy Spirit was active long before Pentecost; tomorrow, I’ll meditate with you about the ways in which Pentecost, coming just ten days after Christ’s ascension, ushered in an even broader and, in many ways, entirely new work of the Spirit.

Let’s start at the very beginning. The third person of the Trinity was active at Creation: “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters” (Gen. 1:2). When God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness,” the plural “us” and “our” included the Holy Spirit no less than the Father and the Son.

As we advance through the history of salvation, we see that the Spirit anointed and empowered individuals to perform special tasks. This was true, for example, not only of Moses but also of the seventy elders to whom Moses agreed to delegate much of his work. God reassured Moses, “I will take some of the Spirit that is on you and put it on them, and they shall bear the burden of the people with you, so that you may not bear it yourself alone” (Num. 11:17). It’s also true, to name just three of the best-known examples, of Gideon (Judges 6:34), Samson (Judges 14:19), and David (1 Sam. 16:13, Psalm 51:11).

Then we arrive at the prophets, whom the Holy Spirit inspired to speak the word of God. Peter affirms, “No prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God” (2 Pet. 1:21, NASB). The prophets themselves acknowledged their dependence on the Holy Spirit. Ezekiel did so repeatedly: “The Spirit entered into me” (Ezek. 2:2; c.f. 3:14, 24; 8:3; 11:24). Micah is another example: “But as for me, I am filled with power, with the Spirit of the Lord … to declare to Jacob his transgression and to Israel his sin” (Mic. 3:8). Indeed, if “all Scripture is breathed out by God,” then not only the words of the prophets but every word of Scripture is the result of the Holy Spirit shaping and breathing life into the language of the writers. (There’s an intended biblical pun here: Greek uses the same word, pneuma, for “breath” and “Spirit.”)

But, it’s not just a matter of special cases. The Spirit was then and is now present to all believers. The psalmist says, “Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? (Psalm 139:7). The Spirit leads believers: “Teach me to do your will, for you are my God! Let your good Spirit lead me on level ground” (Psalm 143:10). The psalms weren’t just David’s private jottings; they became the hymn book of Israel. The people of Israel embraced the psalms because the songs gave them words for their own joys and struggles with God. The Spirit was a recognized part of that experience.

Then there’s the matter of faith. If God “preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham,” and if Abraham’s faith was no less a work of the Spirit than is our own faith (Gal. 3:5-9), then we can safely believe that the faith of all Old Testament believers, however shadowy it may have been, was also the work of the Holy Spirit. This is a blessed thought. In his classic The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit (1889), the conservative Scottish theologian George Smeaton wrote confidently of “the countless millions … regenerated by [the Holy Spirit’s] power since the first promise in Eden.”

I rejoice to know that the Holy Spirit didn’t begin his work at Pentecost, but had been graciously and lovingly giving new life to “countless millions” all along. How much more the Spirit of the ascended Christ began to do at Pentecost and continues moment by moment to accomplish all around the world two thousand years later will be our topic tomorrow.

Your brother in Christ,

Max

P.S. Some of you may want to know why the day is called “Pentecost” Sunday. The Greek word pentēkostē (Acts 2:1) means “fiftieth.” Just as the Feast of Weeks, an early summer harvest festival, fell on the fiftieth day after the first Sabbath following Passover, so Pentecost falls on the fiftieth day after Easter Sunday.