Pentecost is the last feast day the church commemorates in its annual cycle which commences with the advent of Christ. In the past season we have commemorated the birth of Christ on Christ­mas, the death of Christ on Good Friday, the resurrection of Christ on Easter, and the homecoming of Christ on Ascension Day. All of us, boys and girls inclusive, readily understand what the majority of these feast days outwardly proclaim. But can we explain what Pentecost is?

Perhaps you will answer: "Pentecost is the outpouring of the Holy Spirit into the hearts of the disciples gathered at Jerusalem." Indeed, this is the fact of Pentecost; but if your children ask what this outpouring actually means, is it not difficult to put into words?

Pentecost is the most difficult feast to comprehend because it is the most invisible feast. We cannot see the Spirit poured out.

Pentecost is the most misunderstood feast because of its highly internal nature. It is uniquely subjective. Christmas proclaims to the living Church, "God with us"; Easter, "God for us"; Pentecost, "God in us."

Pentecost receives the least recognition of the feast days from the church and the world because the need for the Holy Spirit and His personal application is so dimly felt. In general, the world denies such need, and the church pays only lip profession to it. Far too often even true believers can live on without the Third Person of the holy Trinity.

Nevertheless, Pentecost is essential. The Church of God not only needs the Father Who descended to Paradise immediately after the fall to reveal the covenant of grace, and the Son Who descended to merit the covenant of grace through suffering and death, but also the Holy Spirit Who descended in abundant measure on Pentecost to pour out the benefits of the Father-decreed, Son-merited covenant.

Historically, Pentecost will never be repeated on earth, but spiritually the Holy Ghost must be poured out in, and fill, our hearts and lives. We need the "It is finished" not only of one or two Persons, but of the triune God. We have tragically marred the "It is finished" of the Father's creation, and the Son's "It is finished" of Calvary we cannot assume to ourselves. We need the applicatory, finishing work of the Spirit shall we be rightly convicted of sin, righteousness, and judgment experientially. We need not only the Christmas feast day of the Father, and the Easter feast day of the Son, but also the Pentecost feast day of the Spirit.

This feast-day Spirit the apostles experienced on Pentecost: "And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost" (Acts 2:4a).

None were excluded. All received the Third Person of the Trinity in abundancy.

Previously, the apostles were not destitute of this Spirit, for He had been working in their hearts for several years, and the Lord Jesus breathed on them after He arose, pronouncing, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost" (Jn. 20:21). But now they received the Spirit in the fulness of His Person and work. Not in drops of scarcity, but in showers of overflowing copiousness, they were filled with the fulness of God Triune. Pentecost is indeed the feast of fulfillment.

1. They were filled with the blessings of the Holy Spirit. They were filled with the Spirit's mighty wind, purging fire, and illuminating light, symbolic of a Divine reception of the unspeakable blessings of Jehovah's covenant, justification and sanctification inclusive. They were filled with the heavenly dew of the Spirit as He descended into them and set them apart through His anointing oil to the conscious priesthood of saints.
2. They were filled with the fruits of the Spirit. "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance" (Gal. 5:22-23a).
3. They were filled with the gifts of the Holy Spirit. "They began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance." Miraculously, articulately, and doctrinally they spoke in languages that they never knew before of the wonderful works of God through Christ.
4. They were filled with the greatest work of the Spirit: to glorify the benefits and Person of Christ.
   Though they had experienced the commencement of this work in years gone by through Spirit-wrought room in their souls for Christ via saving conviction, in these pentecostal moments they tasted a fullness of communion with God in Christ to a degree never enjoyed before.
   Heaven and earth were not separated within them in this pentecostal hour. Personally assured of vital union with God through His Son, they were persuaded that Jesus Christ was their Prophet, Priest, and King. Consciously, they no longer be­longed to themselves, but to their faithful Savior, Who had fulfilled all things in their behalf, and now sent His Spirit to fill them with all that He fulfilled for them. Not only a believing in, but an embracing of, Christ was wrought within them by this Spirit. God became their Father, Jesus Christ became their elder Brother, and the Spirit sealed within them that they were adopted sons of God.
5. Ultimately, however, they were pentecostally filled with the Holy Spirit Himself as the Trinity's Third Person. Not only did they experience the blessings, fruits, gifts, and works of the Spirit, but also they "lived in" what the Heidelberg Catechism states so succinctly: "He is given me … to comfort me and abide with me forever.

Unspeakable blessing! The Spirit did more than apply the benefits and Person of Christ to their souls; more than allow them to appropriate and embrace their blessed Immanuel by faith. It not only became Easter within, so that they could speak of sin-forgiveness and eternal life rights, but it became Pentecost as well: they received the Third Person Himself in their hearts as the true and eternal God, causing them to end in the Triune God with Whom they were filled by the Spirit.

Filled with the Holy Ghost! All that was taken away in the first Adam was fully restored through the application of the Second Adam by the Spirit: they were privileged to embrace God Triune. In His Person, the Holy Ghost became Comforter, Sealer, and Intercessor within their souls. They were not only allowed to rest in the father-heart of God and the Mediatorial-heart of the Son, but also in the Person of the Spirit, their everlasting seal and Sealer. On that day the Spirit not only sealed Divine inheritance within them, but was Himself the seal in their souls. They were not only sealed by the Holy Ghost, but with the Holy Ghost, resting in Him (cf. Eph. 1:13). The Holy Spirit sealed His own Person to them on the foundation of His sealing Christ within them, Who, in turn, is sealed by the Father – "for Him hath God the Father sealed" (Jn. 6:27).

Pentecost is true rest in the Triune God and His sealed covenant of grace. Though this experiential rest is rare in our days, God will never utterly remove it from His Church. He will still grace a rem­nant of His remnant with David's bold confession: "He hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure" (2 Sam. 23:5). In this covenant, the Son not only rests in the Father's love, but the Father also rests in the Son's love. Moreover, both the Father and Son rest in the Spirit's effectual love for the elect, while the Spirit rests in the Father's choosing love and the Son's redeeming love.

How can there be a deeper rest on earth than resting in the very love and sovereignty in which God Himself has rested within Himself from eternity, as Zephaniah tells us: "He rests in His love" (3:17)?

Blessed are they who may be included in this pentecostal outpouring: "And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost." Indeed, the gospel-beat of Pentecost is that this filling is for empty vessels, for bankrupt sinners.

May God make room through the mighty rushing wind and purging fire of His Spirit in our hearts for the feast of fulfillment by emptying us of all that is not Him.