Acts 2:1-21

This is What!
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​Last Sunday, if you remember, Steve, our pastoral intern, made a rather interesting observation: People, when asked on the street, Who is Jesus? often respond: "Well, he's a great spiritual teacher."
 
But was he really?, Steve asked.
 
He makes a good point here. The measure of a good teacher is a good student. I once asked a biology student about her choice of major. "My biology teacher in high school inspired me. He's an incredible teacher!"
 
But the disciples of Jesus were far from good students. In fact, they were very poor students. They struggled to understand him. They did not grasp his mission. Their ignorance, their lack of understanding, shows up in our Gospel lesson this morning.
 
Jesus has been teaching his disciples in the upper room before his departure. And, characteristically, they don't understand.
 
Philip says: "Lord, show us the Father and we will be satisfied."
 
“Jesus, show us who God is.”
 
Jesus is utterly bewildered. "Philip, what do you think I have been doing? I have been showing you God from the very beginning!"
 
This—this is the state of ignorance in which the disciples helplessly languished when they gathered around him on Ascension Day (which we celebrated last Sunday). The disciples could only stand there, with mouths open, staring into the sky, which enveloped their Lord and teacher, concealing him from their sight.
 
At that moment, no doubt they turned to one another and said: "Now what?"
 
Today is the Day of Pentecost. Today we discover the answer to their question. To “now what?” we can respond: “this is what!”
 
Let us set the scene. People are streaming into Jerusalem from far and wide. They all converge on the city for a festival.
 
We can picture this. Here in the town of Ionia the population will swell next month, when people come for the free fair. 
 
At fairs, families have fun together, people connect with one another, and all enjoy the festivities.   
 
Fairs are the modern day equivalent of the ancient Jewish religious festival, as we have already said. We may say that the religious festival was the fair for God’s people.
 
The disciples of Jesus are numbered among those in Jerusalem for the fair for God’s people, by which we refer, of course, to the festival of Passover. 
 
Pentecost is a harvest festival, marking the beginning of the wheat harvest. The men brought the first fruits of the harvest to the temple to acknowledge God’s generous bounty. That is, they thanked God in public worship for the crop.
 
Later, Pentecost came to be linked with the giving of the Law by God to Moses on Mount Sinai.
 
Let me remind you about this important event as it is found in Exodus, in the Old Testament.
 
Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the Lord descended on it in fire (Exodus 19:18). And God spoke all these words: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery” (Exodus 20:2).
 
Then God gives the people the Ten Commandments.
 
Jewish people refer to this event as the Revelation (with a capital “R”). God reveals himself, because God wants to make himself known to his people.
 
Doesn’t that inspire wonder and amazement?
 
We say of someone: he has gone in search of God. But our faith says: God goes in search of us. God wants us to know him! Even more than this, God wants to dwell among us, his people!
 
To make yourself known requires language. I can’t really know who you are unless you talk to me, preferably clearly and directly. If you never say anything to me, you remain a mystery to me.
 
In the giving of the Law, God speaks to the people. He makes known to them his character, his will and his ways.
 
Okay. Just as the Lord descended on Mount Sinai in fire for this purpose, so too does the Spirit of God descend here on the disciples in “divided tongues, as of fire” (Acts 2:3).
 
The Sinai event is key to understanding what is happening here, because in the descent of his Spirit on the disciples at this Pentecost festival long ago, God speaks to the people again.
 
Think about “fire” for a moment. Imagine standing around a campfire. Fire warms us up. Imagine looking at each other’s faces. The fire lights up our faces, and we begin to shine.
 
But fire also consumes us, and we speak boldly and forcefully about our deepest convictions.
 
We still speak today of the fiery speech. For example, we say of a preacher who preaches with passion: “he is a fiery preacher.”
 
This language has a long pedigree. The prophet Jeremiah said of the message that God gave him to proclaim to the people that it was “a fire burning in his heart, shut up in his bones” (Jer. 20:9).
 
Of the last and greatest of the prophets, John the Baptist, Jesus said that he was “a lamp that burned and gave light, and that the people were willing for a while to enjoy his light” (John 5:35).
 
In two weeks, we’re going to begin a preaching series on the OT prophets, titled, appropriately enough, “Voices of Fire.”
 
What, then, are these images telling us about the primary manifestation of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost? It is speaking.
 
“All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability” (Acts 2:4).
 
Doesn’t this show us precisely what we have been saying?
 
God wants us to know him!
 
“And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each” (Acts 2:6).
 
The Holy Spirit comes to us, speaking to us in a language we can understand, to dispel our confusion, to clarify our thinking about God, about God’s character, about God’s will and ways.
 
The Spirit descends for the purpose of breaking down barriers of language and understanding.
 
This is important for us to know about the Holy Spirit. In fact, it’s just what our Gospel lesson is teaching us today, reinforcing what we see here.
 
The lesson is part of the Farewell Discourses. And they are just that. Jesus is leaving the disciples to return to the One who sent him.
 
Farewells are occasions for sorrow, for grief, for broken hearts.
 
This certainly applies to the disciples. They are overwhelmed with sorrow in the face of Jesus’ departure. They cannot bear the thought that they are going to be separated from him.
 
Jesus is concerned for his disciples. He assures them that he is not abandoning them. He is not going to leave them all alone. He is going to send from the Father the Holy Spirit.
 
The Spirit is the Advocate, the Comforter, the Helper. He is the new form of the presence of Jesus after his ascension. He is inseparable from the ongoing presence of the resurrected and ascended Lord (David F. Ford). 
 
Before, he could be in only one place at a time. Now, he can be with his disciples everywhere, all the time.
 
That is why Jesus said that it is to their advantage that he goes away. Only then can the Advocate, the Comforter, the Helper, come to them, to be with them at all times and in all places.
 
John Calvin tells us that the Spirit brings together that which is separated by time and space.
 
But the Spirit comes not only to comfort them, but also to teach them.
 
“When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth” (John 16:13).
 
They are not to keep this truth to themselves, but are to testify to it before all those to whom the Spirit sends them.
 
This, in fact, is what they begin to do at the festival of Pentecost before the crowd gathered there in Jerusalem.
 
From this, we can say that the Spirit speaks to them in a language that they can understand, so that, in turn, they can speak to the people there in a language they can understand.
 
It is worth noting in this connection how the ancient church saw Pentecost. They called it a reversal of Babel.
 
Babel refers to the story in Genesis 11. The peoples of the earth came together to build a city and a tower to the heavens, so that they could make a name for themselves.
 
Their hubris, their pride, led God to confuse their language. No longer able to communicate with each other, they abandoned the tower, and scattered over the face of the earth. 
 
A multitude of languages came into being, and the people remained divided by the language barrier.
 
At Pentecost, the Spirit overcame this language barrier and brought the people together. 
 
But for the people of Israel, the word Babel recalled an event that had even deeper significance for them.
 
What is the most significant event in the history of Israel, next to the Exodus from Egypt? 
 
It is the Babylonian captivity. The people were captured by their enemies and deported to Babylon. From there they were scattered throughout the nations.
 
This was God’s judgment on them for their unfaithfulness, for their breaking of the covenant.
 
“I will scatter them like drifting straw to the desert wind” (Jer. 13:24). “I will scatter you among the nations and disperse you across the face of the earth” (Ezek. 22:15).
 
God’s people from every nation under heaven are now here in Jerusalem. They represent these dispersed peoples. They are the people of the diaspora. The time for judgment is past. The time for restoration is here.
 
Pentecost represents a return from exile. It is the time of God’s favor. It is the day of salvation.
 
Now we know why Luke is careful to mention all the places from which God’s people came.
 
This is a pivotal event in salvation history.
 
And its significance was not missed by Peter.
 
He raises his voice and begins to speak to the crowd. He dispels their false ideas about what is happening. He tells them that these men are speaking the truth about God.
 
Even though he makes this claim by the Spirit of truth, he does not speak in his own words. Rather, he refers his fellow Jews to their own Scriptures.
 
This illustrates an important principle, one that, in fact, has been stressed in the classic Presbyterian tradition. 
 
It is this: God’s Spirit and God’s Word go together. We will not usually find God’s Spirit apart from his Word. Nor will we hear God’s Word apart from the Spirit. Just as our breath carries our words, so does God’s Spirit carry God’s Word.
 
That is why we pray for the presence of the Spirit before we read God’s Word in our worship. We call it our Prayer for Illumination. In it we acknowledge our dependence on the Spirit to understand and apply what God is saying to us in his Word.
 
Peter understands God’s Word and refers the crowd to a prophecy in the book of the OT prophet Joel.
 
In the last days, God pours out his spirit on all flesh, on all his servants.
 
Peter interprets what is happening here on Pentecost by means of the prophet Joel. The “all flesh” is represented at this gathering.
 
There are devout Jews from every nation under heaven in Jerusalem for Pentecost, representing all God’s servants, as we have already mentioned.
 
And how does this great event manifest itself, according to Joel?
 
Visions and dreams, to be sure. But to communicate these, one has to speak. “Even upon my servants, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy” (Acts 2:18; emphasis mine).
 
What is it to prophecy but to speak God’s word?
 
This is what Peter and the other disciples are doing on the Day of Pentecost.
 
But there will be a day when all God’s people, men and women, young and old, will speak about God’s deeds of power. They will speak.
 
This includes us here today. "The Spirit and the gifts are ours," according to a hymn we sing here, "A Mighty Fortress is our God." If you have been baptized in Christ and have faith in him, you have the Spirit. And if so, then you have something to speak about..."
 
Each one of you has something to say: about God’s power, God’s grace, God’s ongoing work in the lives of all peoples who come from everywhere.
 
Let us then learn to listen for what the Spirit has to say to us in God’s Word, to each one of us. For he will comfort us by speaking to us in a language that we can understand.
 
And then, when the Spirit has comforted and taught us, let us go out and speak this language to others, so that they too may come to know and call on the name of the same Lord whom we love and serve.
 
For that is the real point of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. All who call on the name of the Lord will be saved. Amen.  


 




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