Acts 2:1-11 – A Good Heart is Hard to Find
(Many of the conclusions, including the wording, set forth here flow from John Eldredge.)
In his book The Moral Intelligence of Children, Harvard professor Robert Coles told a story about Marian, one of his students several years ago. She had arrived at Harvard from the Midwest and was trying hard to work her way through college by cleaning the rooms of her fellow classmates. Again and again she met classmates who had forgotten the meaning of please, of thank you, no matter how high their SAT scores. They did not hesitate to be rude, even crude toward her. One day she was not so subtly propositioned by a young man she knew to be very bright. She quit her job and was preparing to quit going to school. Full of anxiety and anger, she came to see me. “I’ve been taking all these philosophy courses, and we talk about what’s true, what’s important, what’s good. Well, how do you teach people to be good?”
This is the age-old question. And it’s obvious that education is not the answer. With all the education about the dangers of smoking, the dangers of drinking and driving, and the need to use condoms, you’d think we’d be all set. But the problem is not that we don’t know what to do. The problem is that we don’t want to do it. That’s why people still smoke, why people drink and drive, and why people get sexually-transmitted diseases. No, what we need to be a better people is not more education. What we need is transformation. We need less of the “have-to”, and more of the “want-to”.
Which is something that was accomplished at the Acts 2 Pentecost. You may remember from my message 2 weeks ago, when I started this series on Pentecost, that the holiday had been celebrated for over a thousand years. But the one in 30AD changed them all. Let’s read it.
Now, the Jews were gathered in Jerusalem that day because all Jewish men were required to be there. Pentecost was a festival full of history and meaning, celebrating the harvest, as well as remembering the laws of Moses. Watch this – Exodus 19:1-2 says: “In the third month after the Israelites left Egypt - on the very day - they came to the Desert of Sinai. After they set out from Rephidim, they entered the Desert of Sinai, and Israel camped there in the desert in front of the mountain.”
What mountain? Mt. Sinai. What happened there? God gave Moses the law. Up until that time, there had been words from the Lord. There had been people who spoke with God intimately. There had been the occasional appearances by God. But never had there been a set of regulations, letting the people know how to live lives that pleased God. This was law. The nation of Israel had been born for hundreds of years, but it had only been a wandering infant. The giving of the Law meant that the nation was ready to grow up and be productive.
So, using the timing mentioned in Exodus 19, Jewish scholars determined that Moses and the Israelites landed at Mt. Sinai 50 days after the Red Sea. Remember that the word “Pentecost” means 50. So, the holiday also called the Feast of the Harvest was also kind of like a birthday party for the Jews, a time for the family to get together and remember who they were and where they came from.
Now, I find this significant. The Jews went looking for a birthday party, and boys, did they get one. It was the birth of something wonderful. For the Acts 2 Pentecost was the birth of the church. There had always been a remnant, a group of people who would not follow the easiest or the most popular way. No, there had always been a group of God’s people who cared more for His opinion than the opinion of their neighbors, even of their own families. But the church was a new thing. From now on, God would relate to his people in a new way. Less ceremony, more substance.
In fact, the very way that people would connect with the Law would change. God changed the way we connect with the Law because the way was faulty. Not the Law; no, the Law was perfect in what it was designed to do. The Law was given so that we would know what to do to please God, so that we could understand what God wanted. All those regulations were to help us connect to God. The Law was a way of dealing with our sins. It showed us our sins – it told us when we hurt God’s heart. And it gave us a series of sacrifices to bring us back.
But Galatians 3 says that we were “held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed.” That is, the Law, all the commandments given by God to Moses on Mt.Sinai really did nothing to set us free. They told us clearly when we sinned, but they didn’t give a way. They revealed our sins, and showed us the sacrifices to offer to get forgiveness. But they did nothing to change us.
Well, that’s where the Acts 2 Pentecost comes in. It was the birthday of the church, that is to say, the birth of a new way of connecting to God. For if all the other Pentecosts remembered God writing the Law on tablets of stone, the Acts 2 Pentecost celebrates God writing the Law on the tablets of our hearts. It’s what the OT prophet Jeremiah mentioned in Jer.33: “"This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time," declares the LORD. "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.” And David, whom God described as a man after God’s own heart, said in Psalm 40:8 – “I desire to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart.”
What David said poetically was fulfilled literally in Acts 2. Wesleyan theologian Richard Taylor says, “The minds of the Israelites endorsed the Ten Commandments, but their hearts were contrary and perverse to them. The commandments ran counter to their deepest inclinations.” So, instead of giving more rules, what God accomplished at Pentecost was a change of heart. Rules couldn’t change us then, and they never will. Commanding people how to live is something we don’t do effectively. Standards are great and necessary, but they must be born from a heart that wants to please God, not to regulate holiness. After all, it was Paul who described the new covenant, the new agreement with God, with these words: “not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”
Folks, each of us has our own set of values that we believe important. The point is not to force them on others, but help others fall more in love with Jesus. A heart that wants to know Him will do anything to please Him, and will sort things out with Him. That’s life in the Spirit, poured out into our hearts at the Acts 2 Pentecost.
Now, what does this mean for us? Does it mean that we will always behave perfectly? No, though I wish it did. What it means is that we have had transformations. What was once external do’s and don’ts has become an internal drive. For the person who has truly met Christ, Pentecost means that our hearts are changed.
You see, we inherited a sinful heart from our forefather Adam. We fell when he fell. So now, we receive new natures from Jesus, and we receive new hearts. Just as we picked up our sinful natures from Adam, now we receive a good and holy nature from Jesus. It has always been God’s plan not just to forgive you but to restore you. It’s what the OT prophet Ezekiel meant when he quoted God as saying, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” I new heart, a new spirit, a heart of flesh can only mean that now, as believers, our hearts are good. You have a new life. You have a new heart. And that heart is good.
Still need more proof? I know, it’s hard to take in. Let’s go back to Mt.Sinai. God told Moses how to build the tabernacle, the tent that the Israelites would set up while they wandered in the desert. This tent would be the dwelling place of God – Ex.40. Now, just as the Law foreshadowed something better, the Tabernacle did too. The Tabernacle foreshadowed the Temple, a more permanent home for God’s presence. And where is the temple now? 1 Cor.3:16 answers that: “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you?” Your heart is now where God lives.
Ephesians 3:17 records Paul’s prayer that “Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.” But God cannot live where there is evil. After all, Psalm 5:4 says, “You are not a God who takes pleasure in evil; with you the wicked cannot dwell.” Obviously, something pretty drastic must have happened if God lives in our hearts. Yes, it did. Jesus changed us. He made our hearts good.
Of course, though, none of this can happen until we give our hearts back to God. We cannot know the power of a changed life or the power of a walk of freedom until we surrender our lives to Jesus, and surrender them totally. We have to give up all the ways we have given God a divided loyalty. We have to admit all the idols we have ever set up. And we turn, and give ourselves body, soul and spirit back to Him, asking Him to cleanse our hearts and make them new. And He does. He gives us a new heart. And He lives there in that good heart.
This is the law written on our hearts. Not a series of superficial codes that fail us when we long for something better, but rather an internal drive to please God in everything we do. We are not just sinners saved by grace. We were sinners, yes. But how can sinners have good hearts? No, we have a better hope than remaining what we were before Christ found us. And if we could grasp the concept that we are new and different and changed, it would change our lives. It would change the face of Christianity. It seems that this is the lost message of Christianity, because it’s probably revolutionary. Instead of thinking that following our hearts is only an excuse to be selfish, for a dedicated believer to follow his or her heart is probably exactly where God is leading them.
That is life in the Spirit. That is life run in freedom that the Spirit gives, rather than in fear of what might happen. Rather than guided by self-imposed laws, a true believer has the hope that God will tell him or her what He wants. It’s a lot easier for us to determine if someone is living for God if we determine what godliness is, but the heart of a true believer will pursue God’s will anyway, regardless of others’ opinions. Because rules do not change a person’s heart; God does. That’s what having the Law written on your heart means. It means freedom and joy and hope and peace and intimacy with God. It’s what we need. It’s what we long for. It’s what Jesus died for. It’s what the Spirit came at Pentecost for. Do you have it?
