“And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance.” (vs 4)
The verse we’re studying today, and indeed, this entire passage involving most of chapter 2, has been debated and heatedly argued between various camps for many decades. These doctrinal differences have been the cause for more division among the brethren, more church splits, more offense and misunderstanding than perhaps any other debated issue in scripture, in the past century.
I want for us to see the enormous irony in this; that so much divisiveness and estrangement, so much feuding and fighting, has been and continues to rage over something that was intended to mark the oneness, the unity, the love, the family mindset, that is the body of Christ, by God’s own design and creation.
Let’s look at Acts 2:4 and the surrounding verses, and ask the Lord to help us see clearly today.
IT’S A CHURCH!
What’s the first thing a new father does, after he has seen that ‘Mom’ is ok and well cared for, and baby is washed and examined and off to the hospital nursery?
He either makes his way out to the waiting room where friends and family are in attendance, or he digs in his pocket for change and finds the nearest pay phone, or he steps outside and turns on his cell phone, or in some other fashion makes contact with someone somewhere, because someone has to be told, and told right now, either ‘It’s a boy!’ or ‘It’s a girl!’. Right?
I was in attendance at the birth of all of my children, and I know from personal experience that when your child is born, whether the first or the fourth or the tenth, you are not going to be likely to say, ‘Ah, that was nice and all went well, now I think I’ll go home for a nap.’
You might need a nap, and you may very well go home and take one, but not before you tell someone! And if there is no friend or family available, you’re going to be very likely to tell the cashier at the hospital gift shop, or the server at the hospital cafeteria line.
When I think about how the church came in, I think about God the Father decreeing that it come in such a way as to fairly shout to the world, “IT’S A CHURCH!”
Look at Acts 1 with me for a moment and let’s get the full picture. Reading from verse 4
“And gathering them together, He commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the Father had promised. ‘Which,’ He said, ‘you heard of from Me; for John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now’.”
Now at this point they didn’t really understand what He was telling them, otherwise, I don’t think they would have responded to His instruction with yet another question about when He was restoring the kingdom to Israel.
They still didn’t have a clue, but at least this time it appears they were willing to do what He said.
In verse 12 it says they returned to Jerusalem and gathered in the upper room where they were staying. There’s some confusion about whether this was the same upper room where He had His final Passover celebration with the twelve, or an upper room in the temple area, or some other place altogether. I don’t think it need be an issue. They were together in Jerusalem, and that’s what Jesus told them to do.
In verse 13 of chapter one the remaining eleven Apostles are named as those who are gathered there (remember Judas is now dead), devoting themselves to prayer, and this is wonderful to see: “…along with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with His brothers”.
At this point in time there may have been only around 18 or 20 people in the room. But although we aren’t given any more names, in the very next verse it says that when Peter got up to talk about replacing Judas, there were about one hundred and twenty present.
So they cast lots, and Matthias was chosen to be numbered with the eleven.
There’s another note of interest here. Please notice that although there are about 120 people in the room, no one seems to disagree with the suggestion that someone needs to be chosen to replace Judas.
No one is saying, “But we’re all apostles now! Haven’t you studied your Greek?”
No one is standing up and shouting, “Hey, I think we should take nominations and have a vote! Aren’t you going to give the East Jerusalem believers a chance?”
No, the authority of the Apostles as those chosen and taught personally by Christ is still in tact, and there is apparent unanimous agreement that they should seek God’s direction in replacing the son of perdition.
So there is unity and a ‘being of the same mind’.
Then Luke says, “And when the day of Pentecost had come they were all together in one place.”
Christians, it is not that we all need to always be physically together in the same place, but please don’t miss a point of application here.
When believers are united in thought and purpose (Phil 2:2), that is when the Holy Spirit of God moves mightily to do His work.
In obedience to Christ, in this instance to a very specific command, they were in Jerusalem, they were waiting, they were in one place, and they were in concerted prayer.
Throughout history, this has been the fundamental formula in place, not man’s formula, but by God’s leading, when His Holy Spirit has come in power for a supernatural work.
Now that is not to say that every time believers are gathered and praying God is required to bring a miracle. But if we are hoping God will do a miraculous work of His Spirit and bring awakening and revival, then our proper place to be is in spiritual unity and agreement, obeying His commands, waiting patiently on Him for answers to our prayers in which we are also in agreement.
Ok. So here they all are, gathered and praying, and suddenly there came from heaven a ‘noise like a violent, rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting’ (vs 2).
Then followed the second manifestation; when tongues as of fire appeared to them, distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them (vs 3).
Then they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance (vs 4).
Now I want to look more carefully at these things that took place in that upper room, and I want to preface any further observations by saying that I will not be drawn into the trap of all the typical arguments that go nowhere and only cause division, over these manifestations, especially the tongues.
I do want to talk about this experience they had; I have to, since I named it as the topic of my sermon; but I will discuss it for one purpose, and one only, that being, to make application from this passage to our church today and our lives as Christians.
Not to argue for or against the experiences of any other church or denomination, not to advocate that we or anyone else begin or stop anything, and not for mere speculation.
I have a point, and I will attempt to systematically approach and deliver that point. So please just stay with me and engage your brain and let’s go.
THE SEQUENCE OF EVENTS
First, I want to encourage you, as I have had occasion to do in the past, to get all pictures out of your head of movies you’ve seen or perhaps Christian novels you’ve read, and let’s let the content of these verses, 2 through 4, make a new picture there, based only on what we see it saying.
To begin, they are gathered, as we have already noted, in some upper chamber. FF Bruce suggested they may be in a large meeting room above the temple, as it seems that they were immediately among a large crowd when they came out. Another possibility is that they were near to the temple or the marketplace in some private home. In any case, we can safely say that they were in a place large enough to accommodate 120 people.
Now look at the wording of verse 2. Suddenly, not gradually, but suddenly, there came from heaven, not from the windows or the air vents, but from heaven, a noise like a violent, rushing wind.
I am sure most if not all of us have heard past testimonies of people who have been in path of a tornado, or at least very close to it. One after the other will say, “It was like there was a train coming”. “It sounded like a train”.
So can you just imagine, being gathered with over one hundred people, all praying and praising God, and suddenly there is a sound (not that they would have known the sound of a train) like a train going through this closed and crowded room. Note that it didn’t get windy. It was a sound.
What an attention getter!
Then while they’re all wide-eyed and looking around at each other, wondering what is going on, this flame appears and separates so that each individual has this tongue of flame hovering over them.
By now folks, there cannot be any doubt in anyone’s mind that God is doing something! Now it might be interesting and informative sometime to go into a study of the symbolism of the wind and the fire and the things that they represent when referred to in scripture.
But time will not allow that here, so I only want to point out that it says these phenomena appeared, then, they were all filled with the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is not wind. The Holy Spirit is not fire. The Holy Spirit is a Person, and His coming as foretold by Joel and then by John the Baptist, and then by Jesus, was preceded by the sound of wind, and tongues as of fire.
And as soon as they were filled with the Holy Spirit, the outward manifestation of that filling was that they began to speak with other tongues.
The important thing to note here, is that they did not begin to speak of their own accord, or to address one another. They began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance; or, gave them ability to speak out.
Nor are they addressing the crowds outside, even as they go outside, because we see in verse 11 that the people are saying, ‘…we hear them in our own tongues speaking of the mighty deeds of God’.
Ok, so let’s back up just a step.
The 120 are simultaneously filled with the Holy Spirit and begin to speak with other tongues.
The devout Jews who are in Jerusalem for the holy days hear this sound, not the sound of the wind, but the sound of 120 people speaking of the mighty deeds of God, and they gather in bewilderment to listen.
The question now is, were these people all suddenly given a miraculous ability to speak foreign earthly languages, or were they speaking some heavenly language and were being heard by each individual in his own language?
I’m going to spend the rest of our time focusing here and attempting to answer that question, because the conclusion has great bearing on how we understand God and His purposes toward us.
CONFUSION OR COMMUNICATION?
Probably the fundamental thing to consider here, is that our God is not a God of confusion, but of peace and order. He does not divide us, He assembles us.
That is, those He has called to Himself. In the account of the tower of Babel they were people who were disobeying God, and attempting to ascend to Him by their own efforts and merits. So He caused division and alienation among them by changing their languages, so they couldn’t communicate, confusion ensued, and they went their separate ways.
Most of the commentaries on the book of Acts that I have been able to get my hands on, say on this passage from verse 6-8 that the Holy Spirit had given them the miraculous ability to speak foreign languages, and the people in the street hearing them were amazed because they were largely uneducated Galileans, yet were speaking foreign languages.
Now can you put yourself in that setting for just a moment? There are about 15 different cultures from around the Mediterranean listed in verses 9 through 11.
You are of one of those groups. Suddenly, as you pass a certain spot, a very large group of Galileans, judging I suppose by their dress and/or their accents, are all speaking these 15 different languages, all at once. Can you imagine this being a setting that is conducive to clear communication and understanding?
If you are Parthian, do you go over to the Parthian booth to get your message, or what?
I bounced this subject off a brother whose opinion and understanding of scripture I trust.
His take was that he has been in situations where there were large numbers of people speaking numerous languages at the same time, and yet the ability to tune out what is not understood and key in to what is understood is not so far fetched. (Not an exact quote, just the gist)
I agree with that assessment. And if the matter of the people hearing words they understand was the only issue to be considered here, I might let it drop at that.
But there is much more to this issue than rests on the surface.
SOME POINTS FOR CONSIDERATION
Let me first give you a few verses for consideration. The first is here in our text.
Verse 12 says that they were perplexed and saying to one another, ‘What does this mean?’ They were hearing in their own language, as this group of people were speaking of the mighty deeds of God.
But some folks in verse 13 were not perplexed, but mocking and saying, ‘they are full of sweet wine’.
If they were simply speaking in earthly languages from around the civilized world, why would anyone have thought they were drunk? Unless they knew them personally, there would be no reason to believe they didn’t already know how to speak those languages.
One commentator explained it away by saying the Judeans thought of the Galileans as ‘hillbillies’, uneducated, unrefined, lowly, and that is why they were amazed at them speaking different languages. That’s probably the case, if you’re talking about the reasoning of the hearers. But if they were hearing in their own language, then they were not hearing an ‘unknown tongue’, or what we might call a ‘heavenly language’.
If some standing by were not among these ‘devout men’, and not receptive to the Holy Spirit, then they would have been hearing what to their ears was gibberish and nonsense, hence, the accusation that the speakers were drunk.
Next verse, Acts 10:44 and following. Go there and read with me please.
Peter is preaching in the home of Cornelius, a Roman centurion.
“While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell upon all those who were listening to the message. And all the circumcised believers who had come with Peter were amazed, because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out upon the Gentiles also. For they were hearing them speaking with tongues and exalting God.”
These Jews who were now believers in Christ who were with Peter, knew these gentiles had received the Holy Spirit, because they began speaking in tongues. No indication here that they were speaking some earthly language they hadn’t known before. If they were, to whom were they speaking?
To whom were they testifying? Now that they’re saved, there’s apparently no unbelievers in the house!
Third verse I want you to see, is I Cor 14:23 “If therefore the whole church should assemble together and all speak in tongues, and ungifted men or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are mad?”
Paul is addressing a problem of disharmony and disorganization in the Corinthian church. He is pointing out that if ungifted men enter, meaning, men who have not received the Spiritual gifts, or unbelievers, meaning those who have not even received the Holy Spirit, and they hear you all speaking in tongues, won’t they think you are mad?
If they were all speaking different languages at once, and it was the Lord giving them the ability, who would they have been witnessing to? They were all in the same church! And why would anyone think they are mad just for speaking foreign languages.
No, it was a heavenly language, and they were misusing it. So Paul gave them instruction.
Now I have to close, so let me just draw this together and make my point.
Sin separates. Sin divides. Sin brings death to relationships and destroys fellowship.
God unites. God brings oneness and unity. On the day of Pentecost, God reversed the Babel process, and with one language from heaven, He demonstrated that all in Him will be sharers of one divine ‘language’.
No, I’m not talking about the gift of tongues, which typified what I really am talking about.
Believers from every time, from every continent, every nation, every culture and tribe, speak one language.
It is a language of love. It is a language of brotherhood in Christ. It is a language of the Spirit of God that only those with the Spirit in them can comprehend.
As I sat preparing this sermon, my daughter popped up on Instant Messenger and began to chat with me. She asked what kind of songs we sing in church, so I listed a few as examples.
When she saw the title, “Shout to the Lord”, she began telling me a story about her trip a couple of years ago to China. I copied it here to read to you.
When I went to China it was with the understanding that while we were there (for 4 weeks) we would probably not go to church. Because it is difficult to find a church that is not "underground".
We were actually in China for a total of 5 Sundays. The 4th Sunday we found a church that meets in a little building. Well, one of the teachers said that the church started at 10:30am so we all got ready and left for church around 10:10-10:15am.
We got there and they were already almost done with worship time. They saw us pull up and cleared the first 2 rows for us. Mind you it is standing room only in that church. Literally there are people standing outside at the windows, listening, whether rain or shine.
We sat down and they started the service completely over just for us. They were singing hymns. Some we knew some we didn’t.
The hymnals were in Chinese so it didn’t do us much good. But we sang along with the songs we knew...i.e.: The Old Rugged Cross
Instantly I began thinking that that is kinda what heaven will be like. Everyone coming from far and wide and yet we’ll all be singing the same songs.
(this is what I’m talking about, folks)
Anyway,...
The 5th Sunday we were on our way back home. We were in Beiging. We’d just gotten in at 8am and they told us church started at 9am. We wanted to go sooooooo bad.
We found out that the church they were talking about was International Christian Fellowship. In order to get in you have to live somewhere other than China unless you are a missionary. And you MUST provide your driver’s license or passport or else you can’t get in.
So we got there with 1 minute to spare. We walk in and where are the ONLY seats in the church? The front row. They welcomed everyone to church and we soon realized that the person who welcomed us was from Africa, the worship leader was from Australia, the pastor was from Denmark and the person who gave the prayer for the offering was from Russia...oh and the guitar player was from Texas.
Anyway, they start playing and the first song was "shout to the lord".
This is what I mean by a heavenly language, Christians.
It is the language of the good news of Jesus Christ, who died and rose again. And when you speak that language to someone the Holy Spirit has prepared, they too begin to understand and speak it.
This is why I cannot accept the idea that God miraculously gave the Apostles the ability on that one day for that one time, to speak various languages of men.
He was a proud Father, announcing, IT’S A CHURCH! MY CHURCH!
And He ushered His church in with a language that transcends all mere human comprehension and speaks to the spirit from the Spirit the language that says “…everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved”.
Lord, your Holy Spirit speaks one language to our hearts, and He draws us to You, He teaches us Your ways, and He binds us to one another. Help us Lord, with the help that only You can give, to pray sincerely with Brother Orr, “Fill me with fire, where once I burned with shame; Grant my desire to magnify Thy name”
You have given us your message, Lord, and no matter what earthly language we may speak it in, You will use it to unite our hearts and tongues in one language to Magnify Your name. Make it so, and we will be blessed, and You will be glorified.
Amen.
