But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.
– Acts 1:8
To be provincial is to be narrow minded. It is to think just of your little province, your little corner of the world. To be Pentecostal is the opposite. It is to have an expansive view of the church and to be on mission to the whole world. At Pentecost Jesus sends the church out the door not just to Judea, but to Samaria and to the ends of the earth.
No one could accuse the apostle Paul of being provincial. In Acts 13:46-47, he says: “The Lord has commanded us, saying, ‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth’.” In fact, Paul took that command quite literally. What did Paul understand as the ends of the earth?
Well, if Paul headed south from Jerusalem to the Red Sea and passed by boat through the Bab al-Mandab Strait, he would hit the Indian Ocean – the ends of the earth. If he sailed west from Jerusalem on the Mediterranean and passed through the Strait of Gibraltar, he would hit the Atlantic Ocean, the other end of the earth. These were the boundaries of the known world talked about in Psalm 72.
Psalm 72 prophesies of a day when the Lord will have dominion to the ends of the earth; a day when the kings of Tarshish (Spain at the Strait of Gibraltar) and of Sheba and Seba (Yemen and Ethiopia on either side of the Bab al-Mandab Strait) would serve the Lord. Paul would have known this psalm off by heart. When filled with the Holy Spirit, he made it his aim to obey the command of Christ and fulfill the Psalmist’s prophecy.
The last outpost of Roman civilization at the end of the world was in Spain. So that is where Paul resolved in the Spirit to go. In Romans 15 he writes: “I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else’s foundation, but as it is written, ‘Those who have never been told of him will see, and those who have never heard will understand.’ … I hope to see you in passing as I go to Spain.”
We don’t know if Paul ever made it to the end of the earth. Maybe he did; for sure he tried. I like to imagine him singing Psalm 72 along the way: “Christ shall have dominion over land and sea; earth’s remotest regions shall his kingdom be. They that wilds inhabit shall their worship bring; kings shall bring their tribute, nations serve their king!”
Paul was Pentecostal, not provincial. What about you? What about me? What about our churches? I know for myself it is so easy to be provincial, to focus on my own little corner of the world. Pentecost is the antidote. At Pentecost Jesus sends us out the door to the ends of the earth!
This Pentecost, let’s take the command of Jesus at face value. Let’s follow the example of Paul as he followed Jesus (1 Corinthians 11:1). Please generously support mission. Please consider becoming a missionary. Please send out more missionaries as churches. Let’s not quench the Spirit (1 Thessalonians 5:19). Let’s go to the end of the world! Let’s be Pentecostal, not provincial!
