Day of Pentecost
Acts 2:1-21
May 24, 2026
Passover, Tabernacles, and Weeks – these were the three main feasts of Israel, the three feasts which occurred each year and required the Jews to make pilgrimage to Jerusalem, the holy city, for celebration and worship.
As a comparison, in the Christian church we have our major festivals or what we call “high feast” days. And, by the way, the word “feast” is just another way of saying festival or celebration. “Feast” is traditionally a more liturgical or churchy term. We should use this term more in the church because it shows that our celebrations are distinct from what the world does. For example, the world may certainly celebrate Christmas, but not at all like the church celebrates Christmas. For us, the mass of Christ or feast of the nativity is about Jesus and not about Black Friday and spending thousands on gifts and trees and decorations. We may do that, well and good, but we know what the true feast is all about. Same with easter, the feast of the resurrection. It’s not so much about bunnies and eggs as it is about Christ and His triumphant rising again and defeating death.
And it’s the same with the ancient Jewish feasts. These were celebrations or commemorations in which only the people of Israel took part. They were not secular – at least they were not intended to be secular.
In the Gospel reading, Jesus is attending the Feast of Booths or Tabernacles. It’s the time of the fall harvest, around the month of October. The pious Jews have all gathered in Jerusalem for this high feast and they will remain there for seven days. As they made their way from their homes to the holy city, they would’ve recited the psalter – the Psalms, singing certain psalms at certain points in their trek, especially as they walked up the hill to Jerusalem. Psalms like Psalm 122, “I was glad when they said to me, ‘let us go to the house of the Lord’” or “I lift up my eyes to the hills, from where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord,” or “Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion which cannot be moved, but abides forever.”
The feast of tabernacles harkened back to the time of ancient Israel where Moses led the people of God through the desert and on to the promised land. They lived in tents and they relied solely on the Lord’s miraculous provisions of manna and quail, and water. In fact, the feast of booths was about provision, which made it appropriate for the time of harvest, because it drew the people to remember how God is their provider even in times of distress, loneliness, and even when walking through a wilderness with no knowledge of the path’s finish.
Each morning of the seven-day feast, water is drawn from the great Pool of Siloam with a golden pitcher and carried to the temple. The water is poured out and the trumpets of Jerusalem sound and the whole city sings together, “With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.”
Do not ever overlook water for water is everywhere in the life of the faithful. Our Lord’s great provision of water is the beginning of life and runs in eternal life, from the temple, the throne of God.
It is in this setting where Jesus speaks up and says, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’”
Jesus is taking the imagery and the history of the Feast of Tabernacles and He’s applying it to Himself. He’s saying that the water provided in the wilderness to Israel’s forefathers was wonderful, or that the ceremony done in Jerusalem to remember what the Lord did, with water in the pool being poured out in the temple, is great, but instead, He will give you a much better drink from the rivers of the water of life. He is Messiah, and He has come to give His life for all.
We live walking a sort of wilderness path; a journey from our baptisms by water and the Word and on to our heavenly home where water flows from the throne and throughout the city. Apart from Christ, our wilderness – this treacherous world – is parched and all around us the sun-bleached bones of death and hell pierce through the sand, giving us a torrid of what awaits us without water; without Christ.
Our Lord invites us to come and drink, to believe in Him, and to discover how faith in Jesus means living water flows freely from our hearts which He has turned from stone to flesh. This flowing of living water is the work of the Holy Spirit. But we’re not to Pentecost just yet, so hold on, we have a second feast calling for our pilgrimage before we walk up the hill to the temple a third time.
The Feast of Passover. Like the Feast of Booths, Passover was commanded by the Lord to be commemorated each year. Not only did it mark the beginning of the new Jewish year, but it was the feast which harkened the people back to the Lord’s mighty deliverance from Egypt.
Now, as a side note, and I want you to think about this. The celebration of Passover as God commanded it in the Old Testament has not been celebrated by the Jews in centuries. There is no temple; there is no sacrifice; there is no way for the Jews to practice THAT Passover correctly. And so, they have rewritten the Passover, essentially, and have reworked it into the Passover Haggadah or the order of the Seder. It is VERY different than the ancient Passover. When we do the Christianized Seder here, every couple of years, our Seder is very different than their Seder, and we do it for a very different reason. Our Seder is not sacramental; it’s not really worship. It’s more of an educational tool which includes the Sacrament of the Altar as a fulfillment of those ancient things. Some pastors are very much against doing any form of the Seder and I get their reasons. I am not really against it, provided we do it for good reasons and not ascribe to it anything more than what it really is. A retelling of historic events while showing how Jesus fulfills all history by His death and resurrection.
But when the Passover was done in ancient times; when the temple still stood, it was about the Lord’s deliverance. The plagues, the exodus, the parting of the Red Sea, the annihilation of Pharaoh’s armies, all wrapped up in this meal with its main course being the slaughtered spotless lamb, and its blood spread on the doorposts of the house.
It all pointed to Jesus, to Messiah. God delivering the people from Pharaoh as He did and how the people remembered His Passover every year from that time forward, was all a way to kindle their faith and draw them to Messiah.
And so, it only makes sense that Jesus would institute His supper on Passover night. We eat His body as they ate in haste the flesh of the lamb who was slain. We drink His blood as they marked the doorposts with the blood of the lamb; Jesus’ blood covers our entire body and soul and death passes over us. And from His side, blood and water flowed by the soldier’s spear, and truly out of Jesus’ heart flows rivers of living water.
Jesus fulfills the Feast of Passover just as He fulfills the Feast of Booths, it so far it all involves water and blood.
Finally, we get to the Feast of Pentecost, also known as the Feast of Weeks. At the Feast of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit is poured out by Water and the Word upon the people. But this can’t be some disconnected thing. God establishes everything for a reason, and Pentecost is no different.
Pentecost occurred in late spring, 50 days after Passover, during the time of the first or early harvest. Pentecost celebrated God’s abundance and His blessings which He provided on the day they entered the Promised Land, the land of milk and honey, of abundant crops. The ancient people would make their trek, once again, to Jerusalem, singing the psalms of ascent, and they would bring with them their first fruits of the harvest, the best of their fields and crops.
Now, in earlier times, it was much easier for the Jews to pilgrimage to Jerusalem because they all lived a few short days’ walk from the city. But after Babylon and after the scattering of the Jews into the far reaches of the region, many Jews came from non-Jewish countries such as Asia and Libya and southern Europe and the Arab regions. The pilgrimages were very important, and is why these feasts led to hundreds of thousands, if not a million Jews and proselytes (gentiles who converted to Judaism) filling the streets of Jerusalem.
They come to the city to celebrate the Lord’s abundance, and He does not let them down when He sends His Holy Spirit to fill the people with salvation and forgiveness and eternal life. His abundance is for everyone, even those who speak in foreign tongues, and by His apostles, He gives the Gospel to them all.
And dead center of this day of plentiful harvest and abundance: WATER and repentance. Jesus cries out at the Feast of Booths to come to Him and drink aplenty of the waters of the river of life, calling sinners to repent and believe. At Passover, Jesus gives Himself, His body and blood in bread and wine for sinners, for the forgiveness of sins, and for the strengthening of faith and unity. And at Pentecost, the Lord gives even more, the Holy Spirit, so that, by Water, a harvest aplenty might be accomplished when the Word of God goes out and brings life and salvation to the wilderness.
This IS the Christian faith; this IS the wilderness journey of every believer where, from water aplenty, God gives salvation and comfort for our weary souls, from bread and wine, He gives the sustenance of the true body and blood of the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and from the abundance of the Spirit of Life who fills us with the good things of God so that from us, the same good things flow out to our neighbor.
Therefore, love God and serve your neighbor, for this is who God has created you to be by water, blood, and the Spirit. Amen.
