Shavuot / Pentecost: Commemorating Two Great Events & Reminding Us of Two Great Needs

On Shavuot, Jews read the Ten Commandments in synagogues and celebrate the giving of the Torah. Christians who celebrate Pentecost Sunday read Acts chapter two in churches and celebrate the giving of the Holy Spirit. We Messianics acknowledge both of these historic events and celebrate both the giving of the Torah and the giving of the Holy Spirit.

     One thing I appreciate about this particular Biblical holiday is the fact that it reminds us of our need for both Spirit and Truth. We need the truth of the Torah to tell us how God wants His people to live, and we need the Holy Spirit to empower us to live a life of obedience and to be His witnesses.

     Yeshua said those who worship the Father must worship in Spirit and in Truth. We need a balance of Spirit and Truth in our personal walk with the Lord and in our congregations. The Spirit part of our worship consists of prayer and praise and the moving of the Holy Spirit. The Truth part of our worship consists of studying and learning and teaching the Bible.

     If we neglect either Spirit or Truth, we will develop a lopsided, imbalanced walk. In the church world we see examples of this. Among some hyper-charismatic churches, there is a heavy emphasis on the importance of the moving of the Spirit, but little emphasis on the importance of Scriptural Truth. Among some fundamentalist churches, there is a heavy emphasis on the importance of Scriptural Truth, but little emphasis on the importance of the moving of the Spirit.

     I meet a lot of people when I travel to speak at Messianic congregations and conferences. If I had to diagnose the balance of the Messianic Community based on what I’ve seen in my travels, I’d say that many Messianic individuals and congregations are a bit off-balance and need “a strong dose of the Holy Ghost” to restore their sanity and get them stabilized.

     Messianics talk a lot about the Torah but comparatively little about the Holy Spirit. The Torah is important and necessary, but it is not the end goal of our faith. “For Messiah is the end [i.e., the goal] of the law” (Rom. 10:4). As Stern’s Jewish New Testament puts it, “Messiah is the goal at which the Torah aims.” Some Messianics seem to have reversed this. They seem to think that the Torah is the end goal of Messiah, i.e., that the purpose of the Messiah is to point us to the Torah rather than the Torah pointing us to the Messiah.

     Yeshua does indeed point us to the Torah, but that does not mean we do not need the Holy Spirit. Some years ago I wrote an article titled “Dead Doves Don’t Fly.” The initial inspiration for the article was a Jewish parable about the first dove God created.

     The dove came to the Creator with a complaint about his wings.

     “I don’t understand why You put these two things on my back,” the dove complained. “Whenever I try to run like the other animals, I have to drag these things along with me. They hinder my progress. Why did You put these cumbersome appendages on me?”

     “Brother Dove, those are your wings,” the Creator said. Then He showed the dove how to use his two wings to soar in the heavens.

     The rabbis say that the two Tablets of the Law are like the two wings of a dove. Some people view God’s commandments as a heavy, cumbersome weight, just excess baggage that hinders them from fully enjoying life. But when properly utilized, the Torah can lift us up to soar in the heavens.

     That’s a nice parable, but I add one important point:  Dead Doves Don’t Fly. If I have a dead dove in one hand and a live dove in the other hand and I release them both, the dead dove will fall to the ground and the live dove will ascend to the sky. The law of gravity pulls the dead dove down. The law of gravity is present with the live dove as well, but the live dove can overcome the law of gravity and ascend. How?  Not by mere instruction (the word torah means “instruction”) but by the spirit of life in it. “For the law of the Spirit of life in Messiah Yeshua hath made me free from the law of sin and death” (Rom. 8:2).

     The “law of sin and death” is not the Torah; it is the law that says “the soul that sinneth, it shall die” and “the wages of sin is death.” The “life in Messiah Yeshua” is the life of Messiah that is imparted to us by the Holy Spirit. Like the spirit of life in the live dove that enables it to overcome the law of gravity, it is the life of the Spirit in us that enables us to overcome temptation and thus overcome the law of sin and death and soar in the heavenly places. The Torah by itself, without the life of the Holy Spirit, is just dead weight that will pull us down.

     At the end of Mark’s Gospel, Yeshua said that certain signs would follow those who believe, signs such as casting out demons, speaking in tongues, and healing the sick. Some Messianics, on the other hand, seem to think that  different sorts of signs should follow them that believe. They would rewrite the end of Mark’s Gospel like this:  “And these signs shall follow them that believe: they shall know the correct Hebrew pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton; they shall know how to fix the Creator’s calendar exactly the way He wants it; they shall know the precise timeline of the death, burial, and resurrection of Yeshua.”

     Even though I have written about some of these topics and expressed my understanding of them, I get weary of people arguing in a mean-spirited way about debatable details, especially when these mean-spirited people hardly ever talk about the Holy Spirit and rarely if ever experience the moving of the Holy Spirit in their lives. We are commanded to be filled with the Holy Spirit, not with a mean spirit. If a man exhibits more hostility than holiness, he had better check and see if he is filled with the Holy Spirit or a mean spirit.

     After the disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit, “they went forth, and preached every where, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following. Amen” (Mark 16:20).

     Some Messianics expect the Lord to confirm the word with nothing more than irrefutable presentations of sound Biblical doctrine. Sound doctrine is essential, but presentations of sound doctrine without the moving of the Holy Spirit are not enough. We need the Lord to work with us by His Spirit to confirm the word, sometimes with signs following. Sometimes the signs might take the form of casting out demons, or speaking in tongues, or healing the sick. But the signs do not always need to be some dramatic demonstration. Sometimes the signs might be something more subtle and subdued, something the person sees or hears that lets him know that God is confirming the truth that has been presented to him. It might not even be an audible or visible external sign; it might be just the inward witness of the Holy Spirit that assures the hearer that what he has heard is true.

     Regardless of what form the signs take, we should expect the Lord to work with us and confirm the word with signs following. Without this, we are just relying on our own natural ability to present a good, irrefutable argument like a lawyer in a court room. A good, irrefutable argument is no guarantee that the hearers will receive the word we present. On different occasions I have seen an irrefutable case for the seventh-day Sabbath presented to Christians, yet they still do not get it. If the Holy Spirit does not quicken and confirm the word, the word falls on deaf ears.

     If we want the Lord to work with us and confirm the word with signs following, we need to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Not every believer is filled with the Spirit. The disciples in Samaria had believed and were baptized, but they were not filled with the Spirit until Peter and John came and prayed for them. “Now when the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John, who, when they were come down, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost. (For as yet He was fallen upon none of them: only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Yeshua.)  Then they laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost” (Acts 8:14-17).

     When Paul came to Ephesus, he found certain disciples and asked them, “Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?”

     They answered, “We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost.”

     Paul baptized them, “and when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Ghost came on them; and they spake with tongues, and prophesied” (Acts 19:6).

     Throughout the Book of Acts, the various accounts of people being filled with the Spirit mention that the people spoke in tongues. Some people ask if a person can be filled with the Spirit and never speak in tongues. I can’t say the Bible absolutely rules out that possibility, but at the same time I would ask this:  If a person does not experience speaking in tongues, or prophesying, or some similar manifestation, how does that person know for sure that they have been filled with the Spirit?

     A. W. Tozer wrote: “Neither in the Old Testament nor in the New, nor in Christian testimony as found in the writings of the saints, as far as my knowledge goes, was any believer ever filled with the Holy Spirit who did not know he had been filled. Neither was anyone filled who did not know when he was filled. And no one was ever filled gradually... The man who does not know when he was filled was never filled (though of course it is possible to forget the date). And the man who hopes to be filled gradually will never be filled at all.”

     Tozer wrote about his own experience of being filled with the Spirit at age 19, after his future mother-in-law prayed with him. Tozer does not give all the details of his experience or tell how he knew he had been filled. However, his mother-in-law was involved with Pentecostals, and because Pentecostals regard speaking in tongues as “the initial outward evidence” of being filled with the Spirit, it is most likely that Tozer spoke in tongues.

     I believe that every Spirit-filled believer has the potential and ability to speak in tongues, but that some Spirit-filled people, for various reasons, do not engage this potential. I believe this because speaking in tongues was what normally happened when people were filled with the Spirit in the Bible. Paul said, “I would that ye all spake with tongues” (1 Cor. 14:5). This suggests that all believers have the potential to speak in tongues.

     If you can be filled with the Spirit and never speak in tongues, that’s between you and the Lord. But make sure you are filled with the Spirit. Don’t assume you are filled with the Spirit just because of some subjective emotional feeling. Expect some sort of outward manifestation to confirm that you have been filled. Then go forth and ask the Lord to work with you and confirm the word with signs following. Amen.

| DB