Pentecost & the Gifts of the Kingdom - Marlin Sommers

Yeah, so, okay, so we just used the Psalms and the Messiah, this kingdom of God, God the Father. Uh, bring that into the New Testament then. How do we transition from some of the things Jesus is saying in his teachings, and then you go through the death and resurrection? We've already talked a little bit about the angle with Paul. What are some other elements, other pieces to this picture that you would like to add? This whole thing of, you know, the Davidic king and Jesus being the king and, and so on. Um, I can, I can describe, you know, a particular point in time where I, I saw something in two scriptural passages that tied that together, tied together Jesus' ascension and the sending of the Holy Spirit.

Now, I've seen lots of people reference that since. Um, but where it first really clicked with me was reading, um, these two passages. Uh, the first one was in Acts 2. This is Peter's sermon, uh, there on the day of Pentecost. He's quoting Psalms, quoting things that David wrote, applying them to Jesus.

And then about verse 32, you get this. He says, "This Jesus, God raised up, and of that we are all witnesses, being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing." And what he's talking about there is, this is Pentecost, you know, the dramatic giving of the Holy Spirit there. And he says, well, this is because Jesus was exalted to the right hand of the Father, right? That's kingship language. He's at the throne beside the Father, ruling. This is because he's ruling.

And then keep going, ties that right to David. He says, "For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says, 'The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.'" So that quote from Psalm 110.

And Peter continues, "Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified."

And so it ties it to, it treats the ascension as ascending to the throne. Hmm. And saying, that's actually why the Holy Spirit can be poured out, because Jesus is there. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so that, again, that's another angle that I don't know if I've heard very much. Uh, so the Psalms is one and tying it into the line of David, but also you're tying in the Holy Spirit, Pentecost, and so forth as part of this kingdom of God package. Right. Package, I guess that's the right word. I mean, it kind of comes with the territory, so to speak, is, is a way of saying it, I guess you could, you could say. Yeah, so I was, you know, looking at that, I latched on to that in Acts.

Mm-hmm. And then Ephesians 4 takes that same theme, uh, verse 7. But grace, or a gift, was given to each one of us according to the measure of Messiah's gift. Therefore it says, jumps back to quoting the Old Testament again, "When he ascended on high, he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men."

In saying he ascended, what does that mean but that he also descended into the lower regions, the earth? He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens that he might fill all things. So, you know, Paul there is talking about Jesus saying, yes, there's this ascension.

Um, he can now fill all things with his gift, um, because he's ascended. And if we look earlier in Ephesians, because he's at the right hand of the Father. And so he gives the Spirit, and then it goes right into thing. He gave this. He gave the apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, teachers are supposed to do this. It's supposed to result in, in growth in the body and so on. But it's the same thing. Because he's a king, he can give the gift. The Holy Spirit is the mediator of those gifts.

Hmm. And thus of his rule. So right there you have a tie into, you know, kingdom of God and what do we mean by church? Well, if God's rule is coming through gifts and these gifts are different and they're parts of the body, well, God's rule is established when the different parts of the body with their different spiritual gifts are actually working together. Yeah.