I'd like us this morning to turn back to the passage that we read a few minutes ago, to Acts chapter 2.
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There's about 120 in Jerusalem and perhaps a few hundred more in Judea, Galilee, and Samaria.
Today, the number of disciples of Jesus Christ is a vast, uncountable number of people all across the globe.
And worship today is going on in more languages than we could count.
How did it get from that situation, just the most a few hundred in Palestine 2,000 years ago, to this vast number today?
Well, the answer is that it has a lot to do with what happened on the day of Pentecost.
Now, Pentecost is a unique event, just as Jesus' death and resurrection and ascension into heaven are unique events in God's plan and purpose in world history.
And Pentecost is also very closely bound together with Jesus' ascension into heaven.
Peter talks about that in verse 33 of Acts chapter 2, which we didn't read, but there he's really explaining what is happening.
And he says that Jesus has been exalted to the right hand of God, and from there he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear.
So Jesus has been exalted, and from that place he has poured out the Holy Spirit.
Also in John chapter 16, that's Jesus' message to his disciples the evening before his suffering, his crucifixion.
And there he says to them,
Unless I go away, the counselor, and the counselor is a name for the Holy Spirit, the counselor will not come to you.
But if I go, I will send him to you.
So at the beginning of Acts chapter 2, we read that when the day of Pentecost came, they, that's all the disciples, were all together in one place.
And the place was probably the temple.
That would be the only place big enough to house the number of people that's spoken about in this chapter.
And we read of four things happening.
The first is wind.
The second is fire.
The third is the spirit.
And the fourth is languages.
So first of all, wind.
In verse 2, we read that suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.
The words in both Hebrew and Greek, the two main biblical languages, the words for spirit, is the same as the word for wind or breath.
So the word for spirit can mean spirit, wind, or breath.
Jesus, earlier on in John chapter 3, when speaking to Nicodemus, had likened the spirit, the Holy Spirit, to the wind.
You can't see the wind, but you know it by its effects.
We see that frequently when we see windmills.
You can't see the wind, but you see the blades going round.
And, of course, we see the effect of it when we turn on the lights and the fridges going and the oven and everything else that relies on electricity.
We don't see the wind, but we know it by its effects.
And this sound of the wind symbolizes and comes along with the coming of the Holy Spirit.
And it's not a gentle breeze.
It's a violent wind that blows from heaven.
And the promise of the Holy Spirit is closely connected with power.
Jesus, at the end of Luke, tells the disciples,
I'm going to send you what my Father has promised.
But stay in the city of Jerusalem until you have been clothed with power from on high.
And at the beginning of Acts, Jesus says to them, again to the disciples,
you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you.
Now, the Holy Spirit of God has been active since the beginning of creation.
We read that throughout the Old Testament.
Right at the beginning, the Holy Spirit is there at creation,
hovering or brooding over the surface of the waters.
And throughout the Old Testament, when we read of prophets and leaders being sent,
so often we read of God's Spirit enabling and empowering them.
But now, at Pentecost, the Spirit comes with a new and unprecedented power.
And it's not just on a few select individuals who are special, but on all of God's people.
That's what Peter says, quoting from Joel's prophecy,
that in the last days, God will pour out His Spirit on all the people.
And that is what is happening here at Pentecost.
So that's the first thing, wind.
The second is fire.
In verse 3, they saw what seemed to be tongues of fire
that separated and came to rest on each of them.
I mentioned just briefly, when we were introducing the reading,
that Pentecost came to be viewed and celebrated
as the annual celebration of the giving of the law
to the Israelites, to Moses at Sinai.
And when that took place,
we read in Exodus chapter 19 that Mount Sinai was covered with smoke
because the Lord descended on it in fire.
And here, again, we have the Lord descending,
not on the mountain, but on His people in fire.
The Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is God,
is the Lord, is Yahweh,
and He descends on the disciples in fire.
This is an appearance of God.
Also, John the Baptist had said to people,
he said that he was not the Messiah,
but he says, I baptize you with water.
This is in Luke 3.
I baptize you with water,
but one who is more powerful than I will come,
the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.
He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
And so, what John had predicted is now taking place.
The third thing that happens is that they were all filled with the Holy Spirit in verse 4.
Now, there's different terms that are used here.
In this verse, it's that they were all filled,
or filled up with the Spirit.
John the Baptist had spoken of Jesus,
the one coming after him,
baptizing people with the Holy Spirit.
And Peter, when he quotes from Joel's prophecy a bit later on,
he speaks of the Spirit being poured out.
So, these are all different terms for the same thing happening.
The Spirit, they're filled with the Spirit,
they're baptized with the Spirit,
the Spirit is poured out on the disciples.
Now, the terminology of being filled with the Spirit is also used later on,
particularly when the disciples have to speak up about their faith in Christ,
what they have witnessed in the events of Jesus' death and resurrection.
But these other terms of being baptized with the Spirit,
the Spirit being poured out,
are only used of this one-off experience.
And we see here that they're all filled with the Holy Spirit.
It's not that some are filled and not others.
All of them, all the disciples, are filled with the Holy Spirit.
Now, you might wonder, how does that relate to us today?
Well, all those who believe in Christ,
all believers in Christ,
receive the Spirit, they're filled with the Spirit,
when they come to faith, when we come to faith.
At the end of this sort of event on Pentecost,
in verse 38, Peter says to the crowd that gathered there,
repent, and each one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus the Messiah,
so that your sins may be forgiven,
and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
So basically, all who repent of their sins,
all who come to faith in Jesus Christ,
receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Paul writes to the church in Corinth and says that,
we were all baptized with one Spirit,
so as to form one body,
whether Jews, Gentiles, slave or free,
and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.
Abraham Kuyper, who was a Dutch theologian,
around the turn of the 20th century,
used an illustration,
which I guess was really apt for his own time,
because places were coming onto,
you know, electricity was being spread,
and places were coming onto the grid,
and he used the illustration of a whole city
being put on the grid, the electricity grid,
so power is given to the whole city,
so that's like Pentecost.
But then, in sort of subsequent days, weeks, months,
outlying villages,
and even individual houses
are linked up to the electricity grid,
and that is like what happens when we today come to faith.
If you as an individual,
when you put your trust in Jesus Christ,
it's like you're linked up to the grid.
You receive the power of the Holy Spirit,
the Holy Spirit works in your life,
you are filled with the Spirit,
when you come to faith in Jesus Christ.
And then the fourth thing that happens is languages.
In verse four,
that they began to speak in other tongues or languages
as the Spirit enabled them.
So this is a miracle of speaking.
It's not a miracle of hearing,
it's a miracle of speaking.
They actually spoke in many different languages.
It was a sudden, miraculous ability to speak in languages
that they had never previously learned.
These are human languages,
languages spoken by different ethnic groups,
and it's the Spirit,
the Holy Spirit,
that enables them to do this.
Now, the following verses sort of explain this a bit more.
In verse five, it says that
there were staying in Jerusalem,
God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven.
And they were there for the festival,
the Feast of Pentecost.
Many Jews who were sort of scattered around the world
would retire to Jerusalem
to live out the rest of their days there
in the Holy City.
And also, people went on pilgrimage.
People went as pilgrimage,
particularly at festival time,
to Jerusalem.
And in verse six, we read that
when they heard this sound,
a crowd came together in bewilderment,
because each one heard
their own language being spoken.
So these people who had come to Jerusalem,
they would speak the language
of the place they had grown up in.
Probably many of them didn't have much Aramaic,
which was the local language in Jerusalem.
Then in verse seven, we read that
utterly amazed, they asked,
aren't all these who are speaking Galileans?
Then how is it that each of us hears them
in our own native language?
Galilee was not known as a place of learning.
It had a reputation for kind of being out
in the sticks, being a rural backwater.
There was no way that these Galileans,
of all people,
could know all these different languages,
some of which came from very far away.
In fact, we've got a slide with a map.
Can we have the next slide?
Yeah, I don't know how clearly you can see that,
but it's got the names of the different places
just scattered around the Mediterranean
and the Middle East.
So, and Luke lists them in verse nine.
Pardians, Medes, Elamites,
residents of Mesopotamia, Judea,
and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,
Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt,
parts of Libya near Cyrene,
visitors from Rome,
both Jews and converts to Judaism,
Cretans and Arabs.
We hear them declaring the wonders of God
in our own languages.
Now, for those of us,
probably the majority here,
whose first language is English,
it's probably hard for us just to imagine
how amazing this was
because almost everywhere you can go in the world,
you will find some people at least
who will know at least a bit of English.
But imagine a Gaelic speaker
traveling to Pyongyang,
the capital of North Korea.
And there they encounter
a rural North Korean peasant farmer
getting up in the public square
and addressing them in perfect Gaelic.
And there you get a bit closer
to what's happening here.
But it's not just one language,
it's in loads of different languages
that people hear,
the apostles, the disciples,
speaking to them
the wonders of God
in those languages.
So, Peter goes on to
relate these events
to Joel's prophecy
of the last days
when God would pour out
his spirit on all people.
But there's another
Old Testament passage
which is not referenced explicitly,
but I think is in the background here.
And I think Luke hints at it.
That's Genesis chapters 10 and 11.
The list of different nations
in verses 9 to 11.
Maybe Luke is kind of echoing
the list of nations
that is given in Genesis chapter 10.
After the flood at the time of Noah,
it just recounts how different nations
emerged from Noah's descendants
and spread out across the globe.
And then in Genesis chapter 11,
we read of the Tower of Babel.
Let me just read that to you.
This is Genesis 11 from verse 1.
Now the whole world had one language
and a common speech.
As people moved eastward,
they found a plain in Shinar
and settled there.
They said to each other,
come, let's make bricks
and bake them thoroughly.
They used brick instead of stone
and bitumen for mortar.
And they said,
come, let us build ourselves a city
with a tower that reaches to the heavens
so that we may make a name for ourselves.
Otherwise, we will be scattered
over the face of the whole earth.
But the Lord came down to see the city
and the tower the people were building.
The Lord said,
if as one people speaking the same language,
they have begun to do this,
then nothing they plan to do
will be impossible for them.
Come, let us go down
and confuse their language
so they will not be,
so they will not understand each other.
So the Lord scattered them
from there over all the earth
and they stopped building the city.
That is why it was called Babel
because there the Lord confused
the language of the whole world.
From there, the Lord scattered them
over the face of the whole earth.
So at Babel,
there was a communication breakdown
in judgment on the arrogant plans
of that society.
Pentecost
is a communication breakthrough.
Immediately following that account
of Babel in Genesis 11,
we have another genealogy.
And from all those different nations,
God selects one man,
Abram,
out of them all.
And God promises that through Abram,
all the families of the earth
would be blessed.
That's in Genesis 12, verse 3.
That all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.
And now,
at Pentecost,
God had begun to fulfill
that promise
through the death
and resurrection
and ascension of Jesus into heaven.
Through those events,
salvation
for the world
is achieved,
is realized.
And now,
God sends the Holy Spirit
to give power
to the disciples
to witness about Jesus
to the ends
of the earth
in fulfillment
of that promise
to Abram
that all peoples on earth
would be blessed
through him,
through his offspring.
And the sign
that God gives,
along with the sending
of the Holy Spirit,
is that now
God is breaking through
those barriers
set up at Babel
in judgment
on the godless pride
and arrogance
of that society.
God's word,
his message,
the good news
of Jesus Christ
is not just
for one people
or nation
or language,
but for all.
Now,
all the people there
at Pentecost
were Jews,
either by birth
or by conversion
to Judaism.
The gospel impacting
non-Jewish nations
comes later
in Acts.
But this event
anticipates
and signposts
the good news
of Jesus Christ
going to every nation
and tribe
and especially
language
because the good news
of Jesus Christ
is for everyone.
now,
in the past,
I myself have preached
on Pentecost
being a reversal
of Babel.
But that's not
quite right.
If it were,
the apostles
would have maybe
declared the praises
of God
in their own language,
in Aramaic,
and everyone would have
miraculously understood them.
But that's not
what happens here.
Instead,
the Spirit
enables the disciples
to speak
in the numerous
languages
that were understood
and represented there
in Jerusalem
at the feast.
God does not
abolish
the different languages.
Rather,
He communicates
in those languages.
And that's really
important for us
today.
There are
many different
religious traditions
that claim
that one particular
language is
the sacred language,
the holy language.
It might be Arabic
or Sanskrit
or Pali
or Latin
or Syriac
or some other language
that people say
that is the language
that God speaks.
That's the sacred language,
the holy language.
But according to the Bible,
there is no one language
that God communicates in.
God speaks
in every language.
language.
Just think about that
for a minute.
This service
today
is
in English,
the English language.
And for most of us here,
that's
our
mother tongue.
We hear
the word of God
read
and preached
in English.
And we respond
in praise to God
in singing
and praying
in English,
a language
that didn't exist
at the time
of Pentecost
and whose roots
lie in languages
spoken
at the furthest
corners of the earth
from the perspective
of Jerusalem.
But the fact
that we don't even
think about that
most of the time
is really significant.
It's just so
normal,
so natural
to us
because the gospel
has made itself
at home
in the English language.
And that's,
of course,
just as true
for those of you
who speak in
other languages,
the other languages
some of which
we read
from earlier.
And
the fact
that we don't
even think about
this most of the time
is really significant.
It's the work
of the Holy Spirit,
the Spirit
of Christ,
the Spirit
of Pentecost,
the Spirit
of
mission.
That work
that was begun
here on the day
of Pentecost
and is
manifested
by this
miracle of languages.
And we should
give thanks for that,
give thanks that we
can approach God
in our own language,
in our own mother tongue.
It also
tells us that
the work of
Bible translation
is so important
and so in tune
with what is
happening here,
the work of the Spirit
at Pentecost,
so that everyone
may read and hear
the Word of God
in their own
language,
in their own
mother tongue.
And hear the voice
of God
in their own
language.
500 years ago
this month,
the New Testament
was first published
in modern English.
William Tyndale,
the man who
translated it,
labored hard
on that task
and he had,
he suffered exile,
he was exiled
and in the end
suffered martyrdom
for his efforts.
And yet what he achieved
had just
enormous effect
on the English
speaking world.
And indeed
that influence
is still here today.
Even in modern
translations
his influence
is there
and indeed
in English language
he has left
his mark.
And we should
give thanks for that,
that God
used him
to translate
the Bible
into our own
language.
And of course
it's not just English,
it's in countless
other languages too.
Just last October
I was at a conference
in Pakistan
and I met
a man there,
he wasn't a Christian,
he was a
Shia Muslim
cleric
from the far
north of Pakistan,
a place called
Baltistan.
The language
there is
Balty.
And he said,
oh I've got a friend
who's been involved
in translating
the gospel
into my language,
into Balti.
And he tried
to get him
on the phone
to speak to me
but that call
failed.
But it's just
amazing just
to hear of that.
They're in
northern Pakistan
in this language
receiving
the New Testament
in their own
language.
And of course
that's repeated
again and again
all across
the globe.
hope.
I've been in
prayer meetings
where people
have just been
told, you know,
pray in your own
language.
And there's been
people from
speaking Persian,
Dari,
Sarani,
and other languages
praying in those
languages in that
meeting,
praying in their
own mother tongue.
And I think
Pentecost tells us
that Christian
mission that is
in step with
the Holy Spirit
is in no way
imperialistic.
That true
biblical faith
is not an
imperialistic faith.
It doesn't seek
to impose on
listeners,
on new people,
a language and
a culture from
outside.
But the gospel
makes itself at
home in every
language and
culture that it
goes to.
Now, sadly,
sometimes the
church has not
been or was in
step with the
Holy Spirit in
that.
It has imposed
an outside
language and
culture.
But the work of
the Holy Spirit
is to communicate
in every language,
in every culture
on earth.
God is also a
God who creates
and loves,
and God is to
bring unity to
all things in
heaven and on
earth under
Christ.
But God is also
a God who
creates and
loves diversity.
Every snowflake
is unique.
Every acorn
is unique.
Every set of
fingerprints is
unique.
And in the
renewal of all
things, in the
new creation,
we will see that
diversity.
In the redeemed
human race,
we will see not
the abolition of
diverse cultures
and languages,
but they're
bringing together
in their renewal
and redemption
in Jesus Christ.
That is why one
of the final
visions we have
in the New
Testament is in
the book of
Revelation 7
verse 9,
where John the
seer writes,
After this I
looked, and there
before me was a
great multitude
that no one
could count,
from every
nation, tribe,
people, and
language,
standing before
the throne,
and before
the Lamb.
Amen.
May God
bless his
word to us.