Pentecost, after Christ's resurrection, is the day on which Christians around the world celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit. But even before that day, the Son of God had come to live among his people. Now they knew him as their messiah and lord. And, as we saw, he healed the sick and raised the dead. The next day, Pentecost, they were told to wait for a new manifestation of the Spirit. A wind came and blew in the room where the apostles and disciples were gathered. Suddenly, a sound came forth as a mighty rushing wind. Then, as if a tongue of fire had been set among them, they began to speak in tongues, according to the prophecy: As he spoke these words, a roaring sound came out of the throne and a flash of lightning from the sky, brighter than the sun at noon or one thousand times brighter than earthly lightning. And in the center of the flash of lightning stood one like the Son of Man, and he was wearing a robe that reached down to his feet, with an edge of light around him. The hair on his head was white like wool, and his eyes blazed like fire, and out of his mouth came a stream of words like pebbles of a brook. He held a pair of scissors in his hand, and he waved the scissors back and forth. This description is so vivid that those first words of the apostle John can now seem almost familiar: I have seen something wonderful. When he heard this, the crowds were all amazed and confused. Some wondered what he meant by using this strange analogy. Others had heard about this "scissors-wielding" prophet from their old village rabbi, one John son of Zebedee. "You mean the one they talk about in Palestine?" they asked. Then there was another flash of light. All of a sudden, people saw two other figures in the place. One of them was a man named Moses, but he looked old and feeble. He was leaning on a cane. He had been taken from Egypt and forced to come through the sea with his brother and the rest of the people. The other was the prophet Elijah, who had come from heaven. Then they all stood there in amazement and stared at each other. They didn't know what to say. Peter and John came forward and spoke to the people. This is what Peter said: "Men of Israel, why are you so afraid? Why do you still doubt? Look at these men: Elijah and Moses, the very men who were expected to come, but who did not come. They told us that the time had come for all the prophets to be gathered up in the clouds of heaven. So just as they spoke, and as they were turned to dust, so it is now." I'll tell you what I think is going on here. If the people in that synagogue had been familiar with God's previous dealings with the Jews, they would have recognized this scene immediately. And so I think that, as Peter said to them, "men of Israel, why are you so afraid? Why do you still doubt?" Peter was saying to the Jews, "Stop doubting. You've seen for yourselves that God does not keep his promises." As soon as they accepted the miracle of the new prophets, they were told to baptize them. For about a week, these three men stayed in Jerusalem with the disciples. There, many of the disciples saw the risen Christ with their own eyes. And that was the beginning of the church. After about thirty days, the three holy men came down from heaven and took the disciples with them to heaven in a cloud. This image is now familiar to us as the image of a great bird that swoops into the air like an eagle, as in Revelation 12:1–2: A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and was crying out in pain as if she were being punished, "How long, O barren woman, will you cry out in this way? I gave you a fertile crown. You have lost your children and have had no satisfaction." The image of the eagle flying is common to both images, so that this is a special event that we have here. And then in the vision itself, there is the scene where an eagle grabs an olive branch in his beak and puts it in his own nest. And a voice says to the eagle, "Look at the size of this branch. Just now you were grabbing something bigger than this! So be patient and endure your persecution for a while. These things must take place, and you must complete your allotted years." The passage here, then, reminds us that the church is God's new Israel. The church has now inherited the promises of Israel's prophets. The church's first task, then, is to live up to those promises. And since this is the new Israel, these promises have to do with the very image of God. For that reason, the church must receive the Word of God with reverence. It must keep the promises that it has been given in the way that God wants. As Isaiah said so long ago, "O city of God, O Jerusalem, you will be a peaceful habitation for justice and truth. You will be called the Holy City. And never again will war or battle enter into you. He who speaks false things will be chased away, and he who speaks lies will be chased away. And never again will you be plunder to the nations, never again will foreigners enter your gates to wreak your ruin. Therefore, behold, I will gather all the nations, and I will bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat, and I will enter into judgment with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and have divided up my land." _O Jerusalem, you will be a peaceful habitation for justice and truth. You will be called the Holy City. And never again will war or battle enter into you. He who speaks false things will be chased away, and he who speaks lies will be chased away._ And then Isaiah promises that those people will come back to their land. They will be called "Sons of the living God." They will enjoy long life and peace and safety. They will possess the land and have plenty of grain and wine. They will have plenty of wheat, grain, and wine. Isaiah's promises that we have just heard find their echo in other passages. The words that are used in the Christian story refer to the original people of God in the Old Testament. They are the words that were used to describe God's people who had come out of Egypt. They are the words of Deuteronomy 7:7–8: You shall love Yahweh your God, and you will keep his requirements, his decrees, and his laws, his commandments and his teaching that he commanded your fathers to teach you, and that you and your fathers would love and follow. This law, written on stone, is in the Ark of the Covenant, which in turn was a great sign of hope, a great sign of God's grace, when God brought the people of Israel out of Egypt. This law—these commandments—is also the law of the Messiah, written on tablets of stone. And that is a great sign of hope and a great sign of promise for the future. But when these words are used to describe the future, it's important to recognize the ambiguity of the word _people._ The term _people_ has different meanings in different situations. When it is used in the Old Testament, the people are understood to be the physical descendants of the people who had come out of Egypt. In that case, the people are those who descend from Abraham and Sarah, from Jacob and Joseph, and then those who are born to these ancestors. And these are the descendants who belong to the house of Jacob and the house of Israel and are promised salvation. So when that term is used in Deuteronomy, it means simply "your descendants," "your descendants." And there is good reason for that. At that time, a Jew was an unborn child, not a full person. It was only later that they would be given an actual name and assigned a place in the family by having an ancestor named. So that was the time when God was calling out the people to be his own. So, then, how could the Bible be so clear that God is the creator of human life, and that human life is made in the image of God? Because there is no such thing as human life at that time, and so no such thing as the image of God. So it's entirely appropriate to say that God creates life at that moment. And there is a special irony about this that we might have missed. When they are waiting in Egypt for God to act, the Jews are told to wait. They are told to wait patiently. They are told to look for a sign. And then when they are told to wait, God says, "Look! I am going to be with you!" And what does God say then? He says, "Wait a little longer." So, at this time, God doesn't actually act. The Jews are commanded to wait patiently until they get to the promised land. After that, they will