On the Day of Pentecost
TRANSLATION
(1) On the Day of Pentecost, they were all together in one place. (2) And suddenly a sound like the rushing of a powerful wind came from heaven and filled the entire house where they were sitting. (3) And they saw what appeared to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. (4) And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
(5) Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. (6) And when they heard this sound, a crowd gathered. They were bewildered because everyone heard their own language being spoken. (7) Amazed and wondering, they said, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? (8) How is it that everyone of us hears this in the language in which we were born? (9) Parthians and Medes, Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, those from Judaea and Cappadocia, from Pontus and Asia, (10) from Phrygia and Pamphylia, from Egypt and the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and converts to Judaism, (11) Cretans and Arabians, we all hear them speaking about the mighty works of God in our own languages!” (12) Amazed and perplexed, they all asked one another, “What can this mean?” (13) But others mocking said, “They have drunk too much wine.”
OBSERVATIONS
The coming of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, empowering the followers of Jesus to speak in languages unknown to them previously, left everyone in Jerusalem wondering what had just happened. Repeated words included “sound” (vss. 2 & 6), “filled” (vss. 2 & 3), and “Spirit” once defined as “Holy” (both in vs. 4). Words found three times include “speak(ing)” (vss. 4, 6, & 7), “hear(ing)” (vss. 6, 7, & 11), and “language(s)” (vss. 6, 8, & 11). Several synonyms were used to describe the responses of those who heard the news of the Gospel in their own languages: “bewildered…amazed (twice)…astounded…perplexed” (vss. 6, 7, & 12).
OUTLINE
I. On the Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came in power, visibly and audibly, to indwell the believers and enable them to speak in previously unknown languages. (1-4)
II. The Gospel was first proclaimed to the pilgrims in Jerusalem, each in their mother tongue. (5-12)
IDEA STATEMENT
The coming of the Holy Spirit to indwell all believers gave them the empowering they needed to obey the Great Commission Christ had left with them before he departed.
APPLICATION
The miraculous events that took place on the Day of Pentecost just weeks after Jesus’ death and resurrection signaled the “birthday of the church.” Jesus had prophesied, “I will build my church,” in response to Peter’s earlier confession of his messiahship and deity (Mt. 16:18). The coming of the Spirit to permanently indwell all those who had experienced the new birth sparked the great movement of the Gospel radiating outward from Jerusalem unto the uttermost parts of the earth. The first step in the process of world evangelism immediately took place right where the miracle had occurred as Jewish pilgrims who had come from all over the world to worship at the feast in Jerusalem’s temple heard the good news of Jesus’ resurrection proclaimed, each in their own language.
Peter, in recounting for his fellow Jews in Jerusalem what had happened when he had gone to Cornelius’ house to share the Gospel, gave this testimony: “As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on (Cornelius and the gathered Gentiles) just as on us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If then God gave the same gift to (the Gentiles) as he gave to us (Jews) when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God's way” (Acts 11:15-17)? The phrase, “at the beginning,” makes it clear that the Day of Pentecost was considered by the early believers the moment when the church was born. This marked a clear distinction between the Old Testament saints, almost all of them members of the nation of Israel, and the saints of the New Testament, a new body, the church, made up of those from every tongue, nation, and tribe including Israel. As Paul would later write in Ephesians 2, regarding the work of Christ, “For he himself is our peace, who has made us both (Jews and Gentiles) one (church) and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility…that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility” (Eph. 2:14-16).