Acts 2:1-13
When we left the story last week everyone was continually praising and worshiping God. There were about one hundred and twenty of them and they were uniquely unified in thought and action. Acts chapter one covers the ten-day period form the ascension of Jesus to the day of Pentecost, our text for this week will be covering the amazing events surrounding the day of Pentecost…
Everyone is gathered in one place, we do not know where this place but it had to be a big public area to not only fit the one hundred twenty followers of Jesus, but all of the crowd that will gather later in this chapter. Since such a large public space is needed, and according to Luke 24:53 they were continually in the Temple, it is likely that they had gathered at the Temple or near by.
This gathering that we read about here is the building of the very first Christian church service. It started with praise and worship (Luke 24:52-53), followed by a ten day long prayer meeting (Acts 1:14), and then next we week will see the first Christian sermon given, followed by the invitation. So if we look at the ten days as all one service we see the order of service to be some praise and worship, followed by prayer, which is followed by the sermon and wrapped up by the invitation. If you attend a Christian church, you will probably notice that they follow this basic order in their service, or something pretty close to it. I would bet that most of the members of today’s churches could not tell you why they do it in this order, other then that is they way they always have done it. Understand, there is no law surrounding the order of service, this is just descriptive of how the first one was done, and that does have an impact on every service that follows. As we continue through Acts we will see many more traditions started, the trick will be to decide which are prescriptive and which are merely descriptive.
Pentecost was a Jewish feast that celebrated the giving of the Law to Moses, and during the feast they would give the first fruits of the harvest as a sacrifice to God. It always fell fifty days after Passover, and was originally called the Feast of the Harvest (Ex 23:26). It was one of the three required feast for all Jewish men to attend. Jesus is using the Jewish calendar to make a parallel for the Jews to start connecting the dots. First he sacrifices himself in place of the lamb at Passover, and now the Spirit is coming on the day they are celebrating the giving of the Law. Just as the Law was a tutor for Israel, the Holy Spirit will be the guide to instruct Christians.
When we speak of the coming of the Holy Spirit we need to be careful not to imply that the Spirit did not exists before this, and now does as a new creation. We know that the Holy Spirit was there at the creation of the world (Gen 1:1-2). We also see the Spirit empowering Old Testament leaders such as Gideon (Judges 6:34) and David (1 Sam 16:13). What changes here is this is the first time the Spirit has come to dwell in the obedient followers of God, and to permanently anoint them for service. This is a drastic change, and is what sets apart a real genuine Christian from the world, and even from other church attendees. This filling by the Holy Spirit has the primary function of giving the power to witness and serve the Lord (Acts 1:8).
While we are in this section it would be good for a minute to remind ourselves that God choose human instruments to craft the Bible. So while the Holy Spirit gave us everything that was recorded, it does bear some flavoring from the human vessel. This is one of those places where the human element in the writing comes through. Luke describes the sound they heard as “a great wind” and then says that divided tongues as of fire came down on each of them (Acts 2:3). Now no one reading this would get the impression that everyone in the room was cooked like a burger on the grill, but if you take a large fire, large enough to cover all one hundred and twenty people, and then fan it with a great wind you would get a massive blaze that could have take out a substantial part of the city. Obviously that is not what literally happened. What we have here is Luke’s attempt to put into words something that we have never seen before and do not understand fully. In order to do that he is relating it to things we understand so that we can at least get a feel for what is going on. The various authors of the various books in the Bible are often stuck trying to describe spiritual events with a language that only knows how to describe physical events. We must be careful to recognize passages like this through out the Bible. Luke (or more accurately Luke’s source, possibly Peter) is doing his best to relate what happened in a way that we can picture the general concept. I am sure that if we witnessed the event, we could do no better. What actually happened that day we probably will not know on this side of glory, but it was a wondrous event!
In this section we also hit the first use of what we refer to as the “Gift of Tongues.” We will see this gift in use several more times in Acts, and then one last time First Corinthians where an entire chapter is set aside to deal with it. Speaking in Tongues is a point of division among many churches today, and has become a way of saying that a church is not quite right, at least among those who disagree with the practice. I have said many times that there are hills to die on, things in the Faith that you must never compromise on and then there are things that are more stylistic and while you might not like the style of another churches worship it does not make them a freak cult. Speaking in Tongues as it is practiced in some churches today is more of a style of worship and in most cases not a hill to die on. Speaking in Tongues as portrayed in Acts is an entirely different creature and has nothing to do with a style of worship.
To see this we need to look at all of the occurrences where Speaking in Tongues is mentioned. The first one is our text this week, where the entire congregation of early believers spoke in tongues. The second is Acts 10:44-48 where Peter speaks in tongues, and then a third time in Acts 19:6. A forth time appears to be implied in Acts 8:4-8. This gives us enough to see a pattern of how it is being used and why. In each section a new people group is being introduced to the Bible, and more signs then just the speaking are being displayed. It is clear that they being used to validate the speaker and the message as being from God. Jesus himself said three times in John 10 alone that miracles were a sign to validate the claim He was God. People are always looking for tangible proof of a claim, and the more outrageous the claim; the more substantial the proof needs to be.
So how was Speaking in Tongues actually being used? To answer that question we must look at the context of the passage. It says in Acts 2:4 that they spoke with “other tongues”. Then later in the chapter it says that a crowd gathered and heard each of them “speak in his own language.” (Acts 2:6 ) Shortly after that it says, “we hear, each in our own language in which we were born?” (Acts 2:8) This makes it clear what was being spoken was normal languages that were spoken by people everyday. This was not some unintelligible muttering or groaning, but clear speach in known languages for the purpose of preparing and drawing the crowd for Peter’s first sermon. No place in the book of Acts are we ever given the indication that it was anything but known languages. Since it would be impossible for uneducated men to instantly know a different language, this along with the other signs gave the proof to validate the message being given.
In a very real sense what we have here is a revocation of the judgment given at Babel. At Babel man built a tower to give himself glory, and God scattered all mankind and confused his languages. Here men have gathered to give glory to God and God has moved to unite men and pull down the barrier of language.
From this we can see that God’s purpose is to unite all people and break down barriers. When we were united before the judgment at Babel it was said that nothing we planned to do was impossible for us. (Gen 11:6) Today we see that when the various denominations of the Church unite for one cause, great things happen. The power we see in the stories related in the book of Acts come when the followers of God are all in one accord. It is all the division we create amongst ourselves today that makes us weak. Think about it this way, we spend so much time fighting each other that we have no time left to help others or share the Gospel.
Print This Post
