Acts 2:1-13--The Coming of the Holy Spirit

Acts 2:1-13
English Standard Version

The Coming of the Holy Spirit
2 When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. 2 And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3 And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. 4 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.

5 Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. 6 And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. 7 And they were amazed and astonished, saying, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? 9 Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, 11 both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.” 12 And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” 13 But others mocking said, “They are filled with new wine.”

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Remember from our study of the Gospel of John that Jesus had already breathed on His disciples after His resurrection (during the time that He appeared to ten of the eleven, but Thomas was not with them), and told them to receive the Holy Spirit.  (See John 20:22).  Jesus did not promise them that the Holy Spirit would come.  We see this also in Luke 24 where Jesus opened their eyes to understand the Scriptures (that's the work of the Holy Spirit) and He said that He was sending (dispatching) the Holy Spirit.  The word used there has the same root word as the word "apostle" that we talked about yesterday with the prefix ex- before it so it is "one sent out, dispatched, or sent away on a mission."  (See Luke 24:49).  The promise to the Eleven was that they would clothed with power from on high.  We are definitely going to see that happen today.  We are also going to see a different group of people, not the Eleven, receive the Holy Spirit for the first time and that would be the Jewish believers that were gathered together to celebrate the Feast of Pentecost, another one of the pilgrimage feast days.

The Feast of Passover celebrated the harvest, but it also marked an end to the period after Passover when most people would stop eating the unleavened bread they had made and would start to eat regular bread again.  It is the only time that the Lord commanded the people to make leavened bread and offer it as part of a sacrifice to Him and it was symbolic of something God was going to do this day where through the power of the Holy Spirit, He was going to birth the Church that would be made up of our connection to Jesus (the Unleavened Bread) even though we are sinful (leavened) and the two would become one and therefore become an acceptable offering to the Lord.  This also pointed forward to the gospel going to the whole world and being not just for the Jews, but also for the Gentiles (more on this in the next paragraph).  I've talked about the Feast of Pentecost (the Feast of Weeks) in depth before when we studied it in the Old Testament, and I'd refer you back to some of those journal entries.

Today at the Feast of Pentecost in the book of Acts, we see that God used the Holy Spirit to reverse the curse from Genesis 11:1-9 that occurred at the Tower of Babel where the descendants of Ham who were gathered together at Babel in rebellion to the Lord had their languages confused and also those of all the world so that they spoke different languages from each other to help them separate and fill the whole earth.  Now the Church has been given a similar command not to "be fruitful and multiply" in a physical sense, but to "Go into all the world" and "make disciples of every tribe, tongue, and nation....."  This started at Pentecost with God bringing Jews from all the places where Judaism had spread and all the languages they spoke in their homeland to Jerusalem to celebrate this feast.  Probably very few of them actually understood the Hebrew words that were being spoken in the Temple (a few of you reading this may have had the experience of attending a Latin mass in a Roman Catholic Church and get what I'm saying that only the highly educated understood and spoke Latin and it was the same way with Hebrew in this time).  So then the miracle of the tongues here that we focus on so much specifically says that "each one was hearing them speak in his own language." (verse 6).  The text does not say that the apostles spoke in languages that they did not know, but at the same time that the truth was revealed to some, it was concealed from others who only heard nonsense when they said, “They are filled with new wine.” in verse 13.  So the work of the Holy Spirit is shown to be a work both to reveal and to conceal.  We don't usually like to think about His work to conceal, but it is obvious that both were occurring here that day.

Now, how was is that the apostles were in the right place at the right time for when the Holy Spirit came on them?  First, they were obedient to the command of Jesus to return to Jerusalem and while they did take matters into their own hands with choosing Matthias, they did wait there.  However, they did not just gather in the Upper Room for a prayer meeting for 10 days as many imagine.  No, the Bible is clear that they were daily going to the Temple, and we'll see this practice continue throughout the book of Acts, even after the Holy Spirit has come.  On top of that, we already mentioned this was a special day when God would bring the Jews to them--much like how Noah did not go out and gather the animals to go into the Ark, but God caused them to come to Noah.  In the same way, these men who were Jews were in Jerusalem for Pentecost and so was the entire Jewish world who had been exposed to the Old Testament Scriptures, and all of them should have been in Jerusalem just 50 days before this for Passover and seen and heard of everything that happened with Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection.  In fact, they were probably still talking about it.  The hearts of some people were "ripe for harvest" while there were others who hardened their hearts against the gospel and so we see the Holy Spirit revealing the Scriptures to some and hiding their clear meaning from others.

I mentioned Genesis 11 a little bit ago, but let's go back just a little further to Genesis 10 to what many call "The Table of Nations" where we see the various people groups that are descended from Noah's sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth.  I believe that I posted a map posted in my article about Genesis 10 showing these nations, languages and people groups, but note that these Jews are from all those regions.  God has already been about the world of saving a remnant from every tribe, tongue, and nation (the Greek word for "nation" is "ethos" from which we get "ethnicity" and is a not a word meant to express geographical borders, but those with a common culture and heritage and could also be translated as "people group").

I will include the maps once again from the regions talked about in Genesis 10 and the ones mentioned here in verses 9-11.

The first image is representative of the descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japheth from the Table of Nations in Genesis 10.  The second is a list of all the nations and people groups named in Acts 2.  Notice how they overlap and there are actually a few outlying regions (like Rome) not mentioned in Genesis 10 that are mentioned here in Acts 2.  This is the beginning of how the gospel is going to be taken to the whole world as these Jews would in a very short period of time, be expected to go back to their home countries and to their local synagogues and take the gospel with them.  We'll see this when we study Paul's missionary journeys and we see that as long as he stayed in Asia Minor, he found synagogues, most of which had Messianic Jews from Pentecost in them (they were called "Followers of the Way" at first as Jesus said "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  No man comes to the Father except through Me."  (John 14:6).  The book of Acts will be the story of how the Holy Sprit is progressively poured out on all the people of the world starting first with the Eleven, then to the Jews at Pentecost, then we will see it poured out on the Samaritans and an Ethiopian eunuch and also on Cornelius and his household of Gentiles and finally to some that Paul met who had only ever heard of the gospel preached by John the Baptist--that they were to be looking for the Messiah to come and be baptize in repentance, but they knew nothing of Jesus and what He had done to make substitutionary atonement for them.  Each time it is more and more clear to the other believers that the gospel is not just meant for them, but for all people groups in all places.  While the command from Jesus was clear, it take the work of the Holy Spirit to confirm this message through signs and wonders (for that is what the Jews understand and how they put a message to the test).

Now let's speak for a brief moment about what the text does not say.  It does not say that all the people gathered together spoke in tongues.  It does not say that the apostles spoke in a heavenly language that no one speaks here on earth--the indication here is that they spoke in real languages that people understood.  Languages that the apostles probably never heard before.  There is also the miracle that people heard them in their own language even when they may not have been speaking that person's language.  We get a very short synopsis of what happened that day from Luke as we'll hear a few of the words Peter spoke, but I would imagine that by the aid of the Holy Spirit that the apostles talked to anyone and everyone that would listen and made sure they understood in their own language what the Holy Spirit was saying and called each and every person there to repentance and salvation in Christ alone.  We'll see that message and that first "altar call" next time as see how Peter preaches with boldness and how the Spirt put Scripture in Peter's mouth and gives him the understanding to know that those Scriptures are being fulfilled in their midst that very day.