Passover to Pentecost – Forty

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Passover to Pentecost – Forty         Week 6 Day 1

Acts 1: 3 He appeared to them over a period of forty days. (NIV)

This is the week that Jesus ascended into heaven.  We will look at topics related to this week.  The first one will be forty.

Jesus opened and closed His ministry time here on earth with a special forty-day period.  Jesus after His baptism by John went into the wilderness for forty days to fast and was tempted by the devil.  He also had a forty-day period after His resurrection that He spent with His disciples. Normally I would say that forty is the number of testing, but His second forty-day period was not a test.

So, I would like to add another layer to the number forty.  Many of stories that are told with a “forty” time period the person or group is being prepare/trained to go into something new.  Jesus fasted forty days to start His ministry.  His second forty was preparing the disciples for His going back to heaven.  The Exodus forty years prepared the Israelites to be an army and take the Land.  Jesus’ ministry time could have been forty months depending on when he started in His 30th year.

One interesting thing that also could be a forty-day period was with the Exodus.  We know Moses spent two forty-day periods on Sinai with God.  But forty days into the trip could have been when Moses struck the rock and water came out (Exodus 17).  All of these are shadows of Jesus.

Another forty-day story is when Elijah traveled forty days and nights while fleeing from Jezebel going to the Mount of God (1 Kings 19).  Once there he went into a cave and waited for the voice of God to call him out.  Another example of foreshadowing’s of Jesus.

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Passover to Pentecost – The Great Commission

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Passover to Pentecost – The Great Commission    Week 5 Day 7

Go. Matthew 28:19, Mark 16: 15; I am sending you. Luke 24: 49, John 20: 21; You will be my witness. Acts 1:8 (NIV)

The ionic phrase that is found in Matthew 28 has sent countless people to tell the Gospel, maybe it was in a foreign land or your downtown.  Four writers, four slightly different perspectives form one complete picture.

The disciples finally went to Galilee to the mountain He had directed them too (probably Mount Tabor).   If you are putting these appearances in a timeline think about it this way:

  • The meeting with Thomas at the end of the feast of Unleavened Bread
  • Peter and the catch of fishes
  • The 500 and the commission are the same meetings (maybe)

Matthew 28: 18 – 20 – Starts and ends with a promise (all authority has been given to me and surely I am with you).  Baptism and teaching lead to making disciples.

Mark 16: 9 – 20 – The NIV and other bibles give a note that this was probably added at a later date.  I don’t see this as a problem, but it is more like an explanation of what was happening.  If this section is a scorecard rather than just a commission it is easy to see that they were met with opposition when they went out.

Luke 24: 45 – 49 and Acts 1:7 + 8 – Both emphasize the promise of the Holy Spirit and waiting in Jerusalem until they have received Him.  Luke is where we get the idea that evangelism should start in your “Jerusalem.”

John 20: 21 – 23 – Shows a chain of command about going to preach and forgive people their sins.  Much has been written about Jesus breathing the Holy Spirit on them.  Please remember that they had a separate experience on the day of Pentecost, which Luke stressed that they had to wait for.  They needed the help of the Holy Spirit to retain all of the teachings Jesus was doing, but they received POWER on the day of Pentecost.

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Passover to Pentecost – Ephesians 4:22

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Passover to Pentecost – Ephesians 4:22    Week 5 Day 6

Put your old man away, get a new attitude in your mind, and become a new you that is becoming like God – right and holy.  Ephesians 4:22 +23 (My paraphrase)

Peter was given a second chance.  Moses was given a second chance.  The good news is that we can have a second chance.

Romans 10: 9 tells us what we need to do to be saved.  But chapter 4 in Ephesians is telling us to go on in Jesus.  We are new creations with old habits.  Get the new attitude; if you got saved why hang on to any of that old life.

Peter had to leave things behind with his second chance.  The guilt of what he had done must have been very humbling to him.  Moses had to put on a new mind set in order to work the miracles he did and lead all those people.  Second chances mean you need to change.  Jesus helps with the process but you still need to work toward your new life.

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Passover to Pentecost – Moses and His Second Chance

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Passover to Pentecost – Moses and His Second Chance    Week 5 Day 5

So now, go.  I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.  Exodus 3: 10 (NIV)

When I read the accolades of Moses in Deuteronomy 34: 10 + 11 I forget that he was not always like that.  He knew God face-to-face, he did miraculous signs and wonders, and he led a captive people out of their bondage.  But that is not the Moses you meet in Exodus 3 when he first talks to God at the burning bush.  When he left Egypt at the head of a million people he was a different man than when he left ahead of an execution squad.

Moses left Egypt the first time when he was forty so he may have lived in the palace or among the royals for thirty-five years.  He should have received a royal education and knew the Pharaoh who tried to kill him. Whatever his intent was he apparently had not forgotten the five or six years he spent with his family as a child.  Jochebed, his mother, surely told him of his miraculous beginning and told him that God had something important for him to do.

The next forty years of education/living must have been a shock for the “prince” of Egypt. Instead of leading people he was leading sheep.  But by the time he was eighty he had settled in; so when God called him he did not want to go.  He had left Egypt and the Hebrews and seemed to have made no plans to go back.  He was circumcised but had not performed the rite on his sons.

In Exodus 2: 14 a man asked Moses who made you ruler and judge over us, by chapter 5 Moses could say God did.  It truly was a second chance for Moses.  How do you go from Exodus 3 to Deuteronomy 34?  Every time Moses performed one of his signs, every plague started and stopped, every test and trial the Israelites did against God, and that cloud over his head day and night transformed him from fainthearted to fearless.

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Passover to Pentecost – John 21

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Passover to Pentecost – John 21    Week 5 Day 4

He called out to them, “Friends, haven’t you any fish?” John 21: 5 (NIV)

This entire chapter is about Peter.  It is in the Counting of the Omer time period and before Jesus’ ascension.  I am going to set this on the day of the “second” Passover.  One reason is it was the full moon, they could see to fish.  My second reason is Peter “missed” the first one; between cutting off ears, running away, and the three denials at the High Priest house Peter needed a mulligan.  What better way to do it than on the “second Passover.”

It could be that Peter was choosing his fishing business over his apostolic calling, and this was not going to be a onetime thing.    The list of names in 21:2 is familiar but it was not all of the remaining Eleven.  As for Jesus’s command all of the disciples should have been somewhere in Galilee.

Much has been written on the number of fish caught (153), the different words for love used by Jesus (agape) and Peter (phileo), and the variations of the questions.  I want to focus on the public denial and the public reinstatement, and that Jesus was giving Peter a second chance.

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