Thoughts From Acts 2 - Part 1

 2 When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4 All of them were 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 When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. 7 Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? 9 Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome 11 (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” 12 Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”  Acts 2:1-12

     I remember being with some Assemblies of God teens up north at a lake and the discussion turned to tongues. I had never spoken in tongues and they were amazed and somewhat aghast. They gathered around me to pray, and nothing happened. At a later date, another Charismatic friend who I got together with and prayed on a weekly basis prayed for me to receive the gift of tongues. Once again nothing happened. They would say that I resisted the Holy Spirit and maybe they're right because I really didn't want it. For one, it would mean my cessasionist framework of understanding scripture was wrong and secondly, I really didn't want to be babbling in a non-sensical language.

       Whether tongues are for today or not, I yet remain to be convinced but here in this passage, language of angels is not going on. What we see here is religious people gathered together for a yearly pilgrimage according to the rules of the Old Covenant, and they were about to be introduced to the prophesied Messiah who fulfilled the Law and turned religion into relationship. But in order to do that, they needed to hear it in their own language. God gave those in the upper room the gift to speak in languages they didn't know.

       A friend of mine who is a pharmacist, was on a medical mission trip where at one moment he had no interpreters and he needed to convey instructions on how to take this medicine that was essential and dangerous if you took too much. He found himself communicating with the man in an unexplainable way. His wife witnessed it and she said, "How did you do that?" He replied, "I don't know." That's the kind of tongues I want! That's the kind of tongues they got.

      One more thought before I move on, 15 years ago I read a book about a mission plan where you could just train locals and send them out rather than the $70,000 a year cost of sending an American missionary who were unfamiliar with the land, culture, and language. This was especially effective in India. I mentioned it to David Crane, an American missionary to Kenya while I was over there, and he was familiar with the book. His take was that when the Massai see a white man drive through the tundra to their village in a Toyota and preach to them in their language, it brings crowds from everywhere and makes an impact that no indigenous person could have made. They come to see the white man who speaks Massai. That certainly is what's going on here. There's the spectacle not of dust and rumbling of the Toyota engine but rather the noise of the rushing wind of the Holy Spirit and there were Galileans speaking in Arabic, Swahili, Aramaic, Greek, Coptic, and every other language assembled. People rushed to the spot and were ready to hear what the fisherman from Galilee who spoke their language was about to say.

       May we, like Peter, through the empowering of the Holy Spirit use every opportunity where we've got a crowd assembled to tell the good news of Jesus in words that make sense to them.