| Reflections on Acts |
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Chapter 2
It seems likely that "they all" is a reference to all 120 of the disciples, not merely a private meeting of the twelve. This was the Feast of Firstfruits, better known as Pentecost. It was a day the disciples had observed all their lives, and it would never have crossed their minds not to have observed it on this occasion. After this day, it would pass forever into the history of the Christian church as a day of beginnings. Many churches to this day observe Pentecost because it was the first day the Christian church really made a move with power. They baptized 3000 people in one day. We aren’t told exactly what that one place was, but the way the account follows through one would suspect that it’s somewhere in the Temple environs.
Now it would take a special effects genius, I think, to give us this particular effect. All these people were sitting in one place, it was a room of sorts, and suddenly there was a roar of wind. They say a tornado sounds like a freight train coming in the window. And all of a sudden, all across the ceiling of the room there was shimmering fire. And then out of that upon each one of them a little strip of fire descended. It’s hard to imagine the emotions that must have surged through those people as they experienced this
The word "tongues" is universally understood to mean languages. They began to speak with other languages as the Spirit gave them utterance. Now whatever you may believe about speaking in tongues, about the Holy Ghost coming upon people, about prayer language, let’s understand as we go through here what happened on this day is not a gift of unknown languages. It becomes immediately apparent as you study the passage.
The Jewish population of Jerusalem was swollen at this time of year. There were three seasons in a year when Israelites were commanded to appear before God: Passover, Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles. And so at Pentecost Jerusalem was full of people who had come from all over the world and these Jews, these devout men, had been brought up in different nations, speaking different languages. Many were not conversant with Hebrew at all. So this gift of speaking in languages is very important for the purpose of communication of the gospel to people who spoke different languages. The people gathered on this occasion were flabbergasted to hear these men, who by their dress they identified as Galileans, speaking in languages that few in that region had ever heard. There has been a question as to whether the miracle was in the hearing or the speaking, but there is nothing in the account to lead one to think that this was anything other than a miraculous gift to speak a language one had never learned. Once they begin to name the languages being spoken, there is little doubt left about what was happening.
This might not have been so startling if they had merely been speaking Latin or Greek. These languages were widely spoken. But this went way beyond that. One man is there from the part of Libya near Cyrene, which had a different dialect from the rest of Libya, and he heard them speak in that dialect. This is really quite remarkable. They were speaking in known and identified languages. Not only that, but the message was clearly understandable: "We do hear them speak in our languages the wonderful works of God." These men had a message, it was understandable, and the people who heard them grasped the content of the message. This is entirely different from the phenomenon of tongues speaking practiced in many charismatic churches. While the men there wondered what it all meant, Peter steps up to explain.
Something truly wonderful has happened. God has poured out His spirit upon a gathering of men and women, filled them with the spirit, filled them with power and they are proclaiming the wonderful works of God to everyone nearby who will come and listen and hear what they’ll say. Peter connects these events to an ancient prophecy spoken by the prophet Joel. This is nothing like the Old Testament prophets where God sent out one man with a message. The word is that the spirit is not coming to one man in a dream, but is poured out on everyone. Your sons and daughters are going to preach, said Joel. Young men shall see visions, not just old men. Old men will dream dreams. Even your daughters will prophesy. This leads one to think that all 120 disciples were present on this occasion because of this statement.
During the years of Jesus's ministry there were only a relative few who came to Him. Jesus says plainly, "No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day" (John 6:44). Jesus had a very narrow purpose during His ministry, not even taking the Gospel to the Gentiles. Now all that seems to be changed. For now He pours out His Spirit not merely upon 12 men but upon the entirety of the assembled disciples. And they all have a message and they are all able to talk to the assembled people. And it had to be so, for when you find at the end of this day, they had baptized 3000 people. A lot of work was being done by a lot of people. Remember, they didn’t have megaphones or electronics or any speaker systems in those days to carry this message out to the far edges of a crowd. There are so many important things that happened on this occasion that it’s easy to overlook some of the implications. I think the disciples themselves overlooked some very important things. Jesus command to "go and make disciples of the nations (Greek: Gentiles)" was lost on them. For many months after this, they stayed in Jerusalem making disciples and baptizing Jews. Yet they had been given the linguistic ability to take the gospel to the Gentiles.
Now there may have been people in that crowd who came into Jerusalem for Pentecost that year who might not have been there for years. But they will have already heard a great deal about Jesus before this day. So Peter can say, "You all know that God approved Jesus." You had miracles, wonders, signs, sick people were healed, lame people walked, blind people could see, the dead were raised. God did all these things and you know all these things, said Peter.
The chances are there was not one soul listening to Peter who drove a nail through Jesus’s hands. There may not have been one person there who laid a finger upon Jesus, but there were probably people there who screamed, when Pilot was ready to let Jesus go, "Let Him be crucified. Give us Barrabas." What’s also interesting is that God delivered Him with His determinate counsel and foreknowledge. It was His intent from the foundation of the world to deliver Him. "But you took Him," said Peter, "once God delivered Him and with wicked hands crucified Him and killed Him."
Now in this citation from the Book of Psalms, most would have assumed the Psalmist was talking about King David, because all it means is "You’re not going to leave me in the grave to rot." But the is a problem, and Peter addressed it immediately. He says, "Men and brethren, let me freely speak unto you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his sepulchre is with us unto this day." Therefore David did see corruption didn’t he? Well, yes. Then Peter goes on to connect this Psalm to Jesus. The Psalm, said Peter, spoke of the death and resurrection of Jesus--and event to which there were, on this day, 120 witnesses.
This one little sentence said more and you and I are likely to grasp. For one thing, it was addressed to the House of Israel. Everyone assembled there on that day was either of Jewish extraction or one of the tribes that had stayed with Judah through the captivity. Paul himself was a Benjamite and not a Jew. Expectations of the imminent coming of the Messiah were running like a fever. Peter said to all these people assembled that God has made this same Jesus "whom you have crucified" both Lord and Christ. When he said that, it registered. It had been a long time since Passover and the word of Jesus' resurrection, the rumors, the stories of it, had abounded. A lot of them suspected it was true. So Peter's declaration struck home with many assembled there. One need not look for a rational explanation for this. The power of God was present on that day. The Holy Spirit was there and moving in the hearts and minds of people.
It should not be hard to understand that the Gospel was sent to the Jew first. But now, in this short sentence, Peter confirms what we have noted before--that the Gospel, having gone to the Jews, was to also go to the Gentiles. If the Lord shall call them, what right have we to freeze the Gospel as a Jewish message. It is for everyone.
If you take a little fledgling church of 120 people and suddenly add 3,000 new members, it is safe to say you will have some administrative headaches. One day there were 120 disciples. The next day there were 3120 disciples. They weren't called Christians yet. They may not even have seen themselves as a church. They just assembled, and it is from the word "assembly" that the idea of Church came into being. Archaeologists have found what they call a "Christian synagogue" in Jerusalem, and that is not at all surprising. Everyone in that early church was a Jew, and the synagogue was the pattern they all knew. Actually, "synagogue" is a Greek word, not Hebrew, and if you translate "church" back into Greek, synagogue is the logical word for it. But in time, there was a need to distinguish a Christian assembly from a Jewish assembly, and the Greek word Ekklesia, which means "Assembly" was adopted by New Testament writers. So they could talk about visiting a synagogue (Jewish) or they would talk about visiting an ekklesia and the distinction was known to all their readers that they were talking about a Jewish synagogue or a Christian assembly or church. The administrative problem the early church encountered would have been simpler if everyone had gone back home where they came from, but nearly everyone seems to have stayed. In the normal course of events, these people would have come to Jerusalem for Pentecost and when it was over they would have gone home. This time they stayed. And I guess I would have to. After what happened on Pentecost, who knew what might happen next? Maybe the kingdom will immediately appear. Maybe Jesus will return. They didn’t know any better. They could not know that there were 2000 years stretching out ahead of them in history. So they stayed and "continued stedfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers."
Their staying did serve one very important purpose. Large numbers of people heard the Apostles' story over and over again and committed it to memory. There was no New Testament, no sacred writings they could carry with them wherever they went. They had to internalize the message. They had to be able to tell the story from memory. Some of the great old hymns, like "Tell Me the Old, Old Story" and "I Love to Tell the Story" reflect what was going on at this very time. The Story was the Gospel, the story of Jesus Christ, His ministry, His message, His death, His resurrection and His return. That’s the story they were internalizing in these early days, and the story that became the basis of the gospel accounts we read in the Bible. The breaking of bread in this context simply means eating together, sharing the same table. It does not mean observing the Lord’s supper. Bread was the staple food of the time, the center of every meal. Breaking bread, eating together, was a very important part of social bonding In that society.
This is not surprising at all, because enormous power–real power–was present. The best way to understand it, I think, is as a kind of good radiation with a half life. When we speak of the half life of radiation, we mean that a given radioactive material will lose half of its radio activity in a certain period of time. As you read the book of Acts there is a growing realization that the initial surge of power in the early church began to decline over time. There are some interesting examples in the Bible of residual power. Elisha, for example, was a prophet and one of the most powerful prophets that ever lived. He had a double portion of the spirit that was on the Elijah, who is the archetype of all prophets. When Elijah grew old and died, he was buried and the location was well known. Not long after his burial, a group of men were carrying a dead body along to be buried when they saw a group of enemy soldiers in the distance. They had to dispose of this body quickly so they threw it into the tomb where Elisha’s body was buried. This body rolled up against Elisha’s bones and came back to life. It does not seem that God was trying to make any kind of point in raising the dead man. What the incident reveals is that the power of the Holy Spirit is real and that its is residual. If you come into the presence of that power, it will have an effect. In fact the power of God is so real, that were you and I to walk into His presence in our present bodies, we would not survive the exposure to so much power. Another example is when Moses went up on Mount Sinai and spent that time with God receiving the 10 Commandments. When he came back down off the mountain, his face was shining. It wasn’t just radiant in the sense of human happiness, it was shining because Moses had been irradiated with the power of God. But the glory of Moses face faded away, and so must the power around Elisha's bones.
This was a very special time. The pattern the disciples followed here was not a commandment from God for the church in all times, but was what they chose to do because of the marvelous time they were living in. Nothing in their normal lives mattered very much. What mattered was what was here and now--and what might happen next.
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