1 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?”
“What does this mean?” This is the question we will be considering today. What did Pentecost mean to those early Christians in the 1st century, and what does it mean for us today, some 2000 years later?
Verse 1 in the NKJV says, “When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.” That phrase ‘fully come’ is significant here, and can be translated as being fulfilled. Pentecost took place fifty days after the Feast of Firstfruits. It was an ancient festival given to the Israelites in the time of Moses.
All of the Old Testament festivals point us to Christ, and the apostle Paul gives us the true meaning of the Festival of Firstfruits in 1 Corinthians 15:20-23. “Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at His coming those who belong to Christ.”
The Feast of Firstfruits speaks about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Fifty days earlier was the ancient Passover festival, also given during the days of Moses in Exodus 12, when the Israelites were preparing to escape from slavery in Egypt. The blood of the Passover lambs was put onto the sides and tops of their doorframes, so when God went through Egypt that night, putting to death the first-born in each household, He “passed over” the houses that had the blood of the lamb on the doorframes. This is a clear type or shadow of the Cross of Calvary.
The festivals of Passover and Firstfruits belong together. Passover speaks of the death of Jesus, while Firstfruits speaks of His resurrection. The Passover was fulfilled in the death of Christ, and the Feast of Firstfruits was fulfilled in the resurrection of Christ, and Pentecost’s fulfillment is the birth of the Church. That day in Acts 2 which we have just read about was the day the Church came into existence.
What Bethlehem was to the birth of Christ, Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost was to the coming of the Holy Spirit. You could almost say that the Holy Spirit became incarnate, although in a very different way that the Son took on human flesh. It was at Pentecost where the Spirit began to indwell believers. 1 Corinthians 12:13 says, “For in one Spirit we were all baptised into one body - Jews or Greeks, slaves or free - and all were made to drink of one Spirit.”
For centuries the Jews had been celebrating Pentecost, and in Acts 2 it was finally fulfilled. When the Holy Spirit came that day, He was not visible, but He made His presence known in two distinct ways. Verses 2 and 3: “And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them.” It’s important to note here that the Holy Spirit did not come as wind and fire. It sounded like wind, and it looked like fire. When He came, He didn’t come in fire. This is important because you often hear people saying that we need to call on the fire of God to come again. “Lord, let your fire fall” is a prayer you often hear, especially at Pentecost.
Trust me, the last thing you want is for the fire of God to fall on you, because baptism of fire is the judgment which is yet to come. 2 Peter 3:7 says, “The heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.” The book of Revelation is full of references to the wrath of God revealed from heaven, and is almost always described as a judgment of fire. Those who are not baptised by the Holy Spirit - those who are not believers in Jesus Christ - will receive the baptism of fire, which is reserved for those who reject Jesus Christ. So again, when the Spirit came at Pentecost, He did not come in fire. The believers that day saw something that looked like fire.
Verse 4 says, “They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.” There are two parts to this verse which have been the cause if much debate and misunderstanding over the years, and we will look at both of them.
Firstly, as we read in 1 Corinthians 12:13 earlier, Paul writes that all believers are baptised in the Spirit, while in Acts 2:4, Luke says those who were there that day were filled with the Spirit. There is a difference.
We need to go back ten days earlier to the day of Jesus’ ascension. Acts 1:4-5 says, “While staying with them He ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, He said, ‘you heard from me; for John baptised with water, but you will be baptised with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.’”
Up until this point, the Holy Spirit had worked progressively in the lives of the early believers in four distinct ways. First, they were regenerated. This is the second birth which Jesus spoke to Nicodemus about in John 3. “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” (John 3:5)
Secondly, they were indwelt by the Spirit, as Paul wrote in Romans 8:9. “You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him.”
The third step is that they were sealed by the Holy Spirit. Ephesians 1:13 says, “In Him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the Gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit,” and 4:30, “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”
And the final work of the Spirit up until this point is that all believers were baptised by the Holy Spirit. We read Jesus’ words in Acts 1:5 a moment ago: “John baptised with water, but you will be baptised with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
It’s important for us to understand that we are not instructed or commanded in the Bible to seek any of these things, because as Christians we are already regenerated by the second birth, the Spirit indwells us in all His fullness, we are eternally sealed by the Spirit and we have received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. These are all given to us though faith in Jesus Christ.
There are many who believe and teach that Christians need to seek baptism of the Holy Spirit as some kind of “next step” on our journey of faith, but this is not a Biblical teaching, and it comes from a misunderstanding of Acts 19:1-6. “It happened that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul passed through the inland country and came to Ephesus. There he found some disciples. And he said to them, ‘Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?’ And they said, ‘No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.’ And he said, ‘Into what then were you baptised?’ They said, ‘Into John’s baptism.’ And Paul said, ‘John baptised with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, Jesus.’ On hearing this, they were baptised in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they began speaking in tongues and prophesying.” These men were not baptised by the Holy Spirit. They were baptised in the name of Jesus, and when this happened, the Holy Spirit came on them, in exactly the same way as He did at Pentecost. They were filled with the Spirit - not baptised.
Paul himself, after his dramatic conversion on the road to Damascus was not baptised with the Spirit. Instead, he was filled with the Spirit. “Ananias departed and entered the house. And laying his hands on him he said, ‘Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road by which you came has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.’ And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and he regained his sight. Then he rose and was baptised.” (Acts 9:17-18.) His baptism in the name of Jesus and his being filled with the Spirit were two separate things.
On the day of Pentecost in Acts 2, the early believers were filled with the Spirit. They were not baptised by the Spirit. As Jesus said to His disciples just before His ascension, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 28:19)
The point of all of this is that the only thing we are commanded to do when it comes to the ongoing ministry of the Spirit is in Ephesians 5:18. “Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit.” The so-called baptism by the Holy Spirit is not found in Scripture.
Why were the disciples filled with the Spirit on the day of Pentecost? It was for the ministry of service as the Church came into being. The filling of the Spirit was for service. The experience of the day of Pentecost came from the filling of the Holy Spirit, not the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and the same principle applies in our day.
The filling of the Holy Spirit is for service. God empowers His Church by the ongoing work of His Spirit, which is why through spending time in the Word and in prayer, we should be seeking to be continually filled with the Spirit, as we are commanded in Ephesians 5:18. The evangelist D L Moody was once asked why he urged Christians to be filled constantly with the Holy Spirit. His answer was, “I need a continual infilling because I leak.” The reality is that we live in a sinful world, so we constantly need to be replenished by the Spirit, but this is a work of the Spirit. It is not a spiritual experience.
The baptism of the Holy Spirit is not a command given to us. It is not an experience we are to seek. It is an act of God whereby at the point of conversion, believers in Jesus Christ are indwelt by the Spirit of God, sealed for the day of redemption, and placed in the Church to love and serve Jesus Christ, each other and the world. Because of our sinful nature, even though we are saved, we need God to empower us for Christian love and service, and He does that by giving us the gift of the Holy Spirit. This is what Paul was writing about when he listed the spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12.
Then we come to the second half of Acts 2:4. They “began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.” These “other tongues” were not unknown tongues. They were foreign, human languages. Look at verses 8 through 11: “How is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians - we hear them telling in our own tonguesthe mighty works of God.”
Over the years, the Jews had moved to different parts of the Roman Empire, and each year they would travel to Jerusalem for the Feast of Pentecost, just as they did in Acts 2. Many of them couldn’t speak Hebrew like the apostles who were from Galilee. Likewise, the apostles couldn’t speak the languages of the pilgrims who were in Jerusalem for the Feast of Pentecost.
Verse 4 teaches that they spoke these other languages “as the Spirit gave them utterance.” They were from Galilee, and they couldn’t speak all these other languages, but they were speaking them now because they were given the gift of these tongues by the Holy Spirit. Verse 8 again: “How is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language?” They were not talking gibberish. They were not talking in unknown tongues. They spoke the local languages of the people in the crowd.
This was a gift given for a specific purpose and at a specific time. In fact, speaking in other tongues is only mentioned twice more in the New Testament, in Acts 10 and 19, yet in many Christian circles it is believed that speaking in tongues is necessary, and a sure sign that you are baptised by the Holy Spirit. That teaching is not in the Bible, yet a whole false theology has been built on this misunderstanding of what happened at Pentecost, which means in some cases that the entire point of Pentecost is missed.
To many people it’s all about experiencing the Spirit’s power for ourselves – we want the Holy Spirit to make us feel all warm and fuzzy, but that was not why the Spirit came at Pentecost.
The focus of Pentecost was not personal experiences and spiritual highs. It was evangelism, and it still is today. More than anything else, the world needs to hear the message of God’s love.
And that is what needs to be the number one priority of the Church.
Jesus couldn’t have made Himself any clearer in the Great Commission in Matthew 28:19-20. “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
What does this tell us? If we are able to understand the heart of God here, then we need to tell others about Jesus.
Unless someone goes to them, they will not hear the Gospel being proclaimed, and we must do whatever we can do. The purpose has not changed.
The moment we come to know Christ, God commissions us to share this message with our world.
Your world may be just the circle of friends you know or the people you work with. Jesus did not expect His disciples to go to the ends of the world right from the beginning – they were to share the Gospel in Jerusalem first, and then Judea and Samaria, and in order to empower them to share the Gospel, the Holy Spirit gave them the gift of speaking in tongues - in foreign, human languages.
The Reformation Study Bible explains the purpose of the apostles speaking in tongues in Acts 2 like this: “The fact that all of the Jews present hear the apostles speak in their own language points to Pentecost being a reversal of God’s judgment at Babel. In order to prevent human beings from uniting together as a collective whole in opposition to God and His people, the Lord confused the languages of humanity at Babel, separating the human race into various groups, each with its own language. In Christ, human beings from every tribe and tongue are reunited as one people of God in service to His kingdom.”
The gift of tongues was given on the Day of Pentecost as the Holy Spirit came to permanently indwell the followers of Christ. They were given this gift of speaking foreign languages in order to preach the Gospel without having to first learn these languages.
But what about the so-called ecstatic, unintelligible or “heavenly” languages? Some point to Paul’s letter to the Corinthian Church to support it. We must remember though, that the Corinthian Church was a troubled and divided Church, as they had allowed all kinds of paganism and idolatry into their Church. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 14:2, “One who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men but to God; for no one understands him, but he utters mysteries in the Spirit.”
What does that mean? John MacArthur, in his commentary writes, “The carnal Corinthians using the counterfeit ecstatic speech of paganism were not interested in being understood, but in making a dramatic display. The spirit by which they spoke was not the Holy Spirit, but their own human spirit or some demon; and the mysteries they declared were the type associated with the pagan mystery religions. ‘Speaks not to men but to God’ is better translated, ‘to a god.’ The Greek text has no definite article. Their gibberish was worship of pagan deities. The Bible records no incident of any believer ever speaking to God in any other than normal human language.”
Another favourite “go to” verse on the issue of tongues is Romans 8:26. “The Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” We’ve all been there. There are times when we simply do not know what to pray or how to pray, so the Spirit intercedes for us. It is the Spirit Himself, not us who “intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.”
We also hear Christians saying we need a “new” Pentecost, but that is not necessary. The Day of Pentecost happened in a unique way at a specific point in history, and it is not something we need to try and duplicate. We are still living in the age of the Church. We are living in the age of Pentecost.
We don’t need to invite the Holy Spirit to come, because He is already here in all of His fullness, and He has been ever since the events described in Acts 2. 1 Corinthians 9:19 says, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?” Where the Church gathers, the Holy Spirit is there, so there is no need to beg or invite Him to come. He is here. The Spirit of God is in the Church today.
Just before going to the cross, Jesus said to His disciples, “When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth, for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak, and He will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for He will take what is mine and declare it to you.” (John 16:13-14). This is what the Spirit did in Acts 2, and He continues to do the same today.
Pentecost marked the birth of the Christian Church, and although separated by some 2000 years from the events in Acts 2, the Holy Spirit continues to call out a body of believers to form the Church. The Greek word for Church is ekklēsia, quite literally, the “called out ones.”
The day before Pentecost there was no Church, and the day after Pentecost there was a Church, and we are part of it. Just as the Feast of Pentecost in the Old Testament followed fifty days after the Feast of the Firstfruits, so fifty days after Jesus rose from the dead, the Holy Spirit came to establish the Church. And it is He who equips us for service as we take the message of the Gospel of Christ to the lost.
Today the Holy Spirit continues to breathe new life into the Church. The life-giving breath of God still touches us. The Holy Spirit is with us on this Day of Pentecost, and He continues to convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment. He continues to guide us into all truth, telling us what is yet to come, and bringing glory to Jesus.
The Spirit of God empowers us to be God’s tools of grace, hope and love in our community.
That is the kind of Church we should see in the world today, but sadly, in many cases we don’t. And the reason is because to a large extent the Person and work of the Holy Spirit in the Church and in the lives of so many Christians is misunderstood and neglected. Too easily we fail to recognise and understand that we are still living in the age of Pentecost, and therefore we should be experiencing the continuing power of Pentecost.
This is the age of Pentecost – it did not end when the first generation of the Church died. We shouldn’t be praying for a new Pentecost. We should be praying that by the power of His Spirit that God would open our eyes and wake us up to the reality that Pentecost is still with us.
You can’t read the book of Acts without being impressed with the fact that the members of the early Church were supernaturally filled with the Holy Spirit. That was why the early Church of Christ was so effective and made such an astonishing impact on the world in such a short time. The tragedy is that so many Christian congregations all over the world today are not making themselves available to the power of God, and instead are kind of sleepwalking along, completely oblivious to the desperate need of lost people to know the truth and the hope we have in Christ.
The real message of Pentecost is not that it was a wonderful day and the official birth of the Christian Church. The real message is that we are duty and honour bound to seek God’s face, to rediscover the zeal of those early Christians, and in so doing make ourselves just as available to God so that He can fill us with Pentecost power and use us to bring glory to Himself.
“I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. You know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.” (John 14:16-17)
A key word in these verses is “forever.” This promise has not changed. It still applies to us today. It is not a repetition of Pentecost or a new Pentecost that we need, but rather the realisation that Pentecost has never ended.
Homegroup Study Notes
Read Acts 2:1-12
In verse 12 the question is asked, “What does this mean?”
The person and the work of the Holy Spirit often causes confusion among Christians. Why is this?
Many Christians believe that Pentecost was a once-off event in the history of the Church, and has not been repeated. Do you agree with this belief? Why, or why not?
How does the 21st century Church differ to the 1st century Church we see in Acts 2? What similarities are there?
Without the power of the Holy Spirit, the Church would be completely ineffective in the world today (in fact, it wouldn’t even exist), yet Pentecost is generally not regarded as crucial to the history of the Church and the life of a Christian as say, Christmas and Easter. Why do you think that Pentecost is somehow glossed over in the Church?
How have you experienced the transforming power of the Holy Spirit? What were the circumstances, and how did it change you?
As a congregation of the Church of Jesus Christ, we are commissioned to be actively involved in the life and witness of the Church.
In which areas do you feel we are succeeding, and where do you believe there are areas for growth and improvement?