Acts 2.1-13

Pentecost was one of the three religious festivals that required the presence of all male Jews (the other two were Passover and Tabernacles). It took place shortly after the grain harvest in early summer and celebrated God’s provision for his people. It is interesting that the provision on this particular day was God’s gift of the Holy Spirit. It marked the origin of the New Testament church. As God appeared to Moses in a burning bush to give him the law (Exod. 2:3-5), the coming of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost was with “tongues of fire” (v. 3). Further, the “violent wind from heaven” (v. 2) matches the breath of God that in Ezekiel 37 brought life to the dry bones of Israel. The two events mark the beginnings of Old Testament Israel and New Testament Christianity.
         The coming of the Spirit was not a personal and individual experience but an open public event in which the Spirit in fulfillment of prophecy came upon the believers who then began to speak in languages unknown to them. The crowds that gathered were amazed at what they were seeing. A small group of Galilean men were speaking in the various languages of Jews who had come to Jerusalem from all over the world to celebrate the day of Pentecost. Amazing! How could that uneducated bunch know all these native dialects? In addition to their local native tongue, they could perhaps understand Greek, the common language of the world at that time, but very little else. Unable to understand what they were watching, the crowd decided to pass it off saying that the group be a little tipsy.
         Regardless of your view of “tongues” (heavenly languages or simply languages unknown to those speaking) what we see on this momentous occasion is the presence of the supernatural. It is perfectly reasonable that when something from the heavenly world enters our natural world, the “miraculous” takes place. As we noted, the coming of the Holy Spirit is accompanied by the wind from heaven and tongues of fire. The result is that people begin to speak in languages unknown to them. This clash of spheres must of necessity be accompanied with the “miraculous.” Whether it was intended that the experience with all its excitement be permanent is another question. What we do know is that the Spirit is alive and well in the heart of every born-again Christian. An awareness of this truth will alter a person’s life dramatically.Acts 2.1-13