Luke is well aware of the fact that without the Holy Spirit Christian discipleship would be impossible.  Jesus promised He would send the Holy Spirit to enable His disciples to continue His work on earth. There can be no life without the Life Giver.  No understanding without the Spirit of Truth.  No fellowship without the unity of the Spirit. No Christlikeness of character apart from His fruit, and no effective witness without His power.

As a body without breath is a corpse, so the church without the Spirit is dead.  This is a quote from John Stott in his Study Guide The Message of Acts.

For the first Century Jew Pentecost was the 50th day after Passover.  It was an agricultural festival, the day when farmers would bring the first sheaf of wheat from their crop offered to God partly in thanksgiving and partly as a prayer that the rest of the crop would be safely gathered in.  but these two festivals, Passover and Pentecost, had echoes of when God rescued the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt.  Fifty days after Passover they reached Mount Sinai where Moses received the 10 Commandments.  So it’s all about God giving to His redeemed people the way of life by which they must now carry out His purposes.  Moses went up Mount Sinai and returned with the tablets of stone on which were written the 10 commandments.  Jesus went up to heaven in His Ascension and comes back in the Holy Spirit to write the law on our hearts as was promised through Jeremiah 31:33, “I will put my law within them, and will write it on their hearts.”

Pentecost is a word with very particular meaning which Luke is keen we should understand, so let’s look at each section in more detail.

In chapter 1 Jesus had told His disciples not to leave Jerusalem but to wait for the promise of the Father, “for John baptised with water, but you will be baptised with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”  I wonder what they thought that promise would entail?  They returned to Jerusalem and decided it was time to replace Judas, who had committed suicide after betraying Jesus, by someone who had witnessed Jesus’ ministry, death and resurrection.  After prayer Matthias was chosen.

When the Day of Pentecost arrived all 12 disciples were together in a room in Jerusalem.  As the Holy Spirit came upon them He was accompanied by 3 supernatural signs.

First they heard a sound like the blowing of a mighty wind.  The noise was not a gale force wind, but that was the only way they could explain it.

Second they saw what looked like tongues of fire, splitting up and rest on each one of them.

Third they began to speak in languages which were not ordinary, but in some way, other. 

Three of their higher senses were affected.  Hearing, Sight and Speech.

This experience was more than just feelings and they struggled to understand what was happening. The wind may have represented power, the fire may have represented purity, and tongues may signify the universal call of the Gospel.

When I was in my early 50s I had a serious bout of sciatica just before Christmas.  There was so much to do and all the doctor would say was rest, lie on the floor, put a board under the mattress, take pain killers. Feeling very frustrated, when the minister phoned to see how I was I said, “I should have followed the advice in James and sent for you and the deacons instead of the doctor.”  There was a gulp at the other end of the phone and Glen said, “I could come tomorrow afternoon if you like.”  “You’re on” I replied.  I was privileged to receive healing through prayer.  The only way I could describe it was that it felt like butterfly wings moving up and down my spine, then, for several weeks after, like a steel corset holding everything in place whenever I was in danger of pulling things out of place again.  I could only describe the feeling through things I understood.  I’ve never experienced sciatica again and pray I never will!

Having had the experience of the Holy Spirit’s power, the disciples went out into the crowded street. In this section Luke concentrates on the gift of tongues. The crowd that came together to hear the disciples were all God-fearing Jews from every nation around the Mediterranean basin, every nation where there were Jewish communities, probably descendants of Jewish exiles transported in the 8th and 6th BC.  He mentions Parthians, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, Lybia near Cyrene, Rome, Cretans and Arabs. So this was an international, multi-lingual crowd which gathered round the 120 believers yet they all heard them declaring the wonders of God in their own native language.  The disciples were known to be Galileans who had the reputation of being uncultured.  They also had difficulty pronouncing guttural sounds and swallowed syllables when speaking. 

I taught and lived in Barnsley for 40 years and they never pronounce the letter H in normal speech. If they were doing any public speaking they would try to remember to speak ‘properly’ but that usually meant sounding silent Hs.  For example “Honestly ‘e ain’t honest.” 

This experience was obviously something very unusual.  It wasn’t a common language.  Amazed and perplexed they asked one another, “What does this mean?”

A minority, who for some reason, had not understood any of the languages, made fun of them. “They’re drunk, too much wine!”

The first time someone spoke in tongues in the church I attended in Barnsley, one of the congregation was heard to say, quite loudly, “why are they jabbering in French?” not that she understood French, but it was the only foreign language she knew was taught in school.  We try to rationalise what we don’t understand.

Nothing could have demonstrated more clearly than this the multi-racial, multi-lingual nature of God’s Kingdom.  Ever since the early Church fathers, commentators have seen the blessing of Pentecost as a dramatic and deliberate reversal of the curse of Babel.  At Babel human languages were confused and nations were scattered; in Jerusalem the language barrier was supernaturally overcome as a sign that nations would now be gathered together in Christ, ending in the great day when the redeemed company would be drawn from every nation, tribe, people and language.  At Babel earth proudly tried to ascend to heaven, in Jerusalem heaven humbly descended to earth. 

Hardly surprisingly to some it simply sounded like slurred, babbling speech of people who have had too much to drink.  Again and again we find opposition, sneering, scoffing at what the disciples say.  In the work of Christians today there are always plenty who declare we are wasting our time and talking incomprehensible nonsense. Equally some Christians are so concerned to keep safe appearances and to make sure they are looking like ordinary, normal, sane people, that they would never, under any circumstances be accused of being drunk at any time of the day.

Peter pointed out it was too early in the day for anyone to be drunk.  They would have been fasting during the Sabbath on Saturday. They were only making fun of something they didn’t understand.

Part of the challenge of this passage is the question: have our churches today got enough energy, enough Spirit driven new life, to make onlookers pass any comment at all? Has anything happened which might make people think we were drunk? If not, is it because the Spirit is simply working in different ways, or have we successfully quenched the Spirit that there is nothing happening at all?  Is our Christian faith a very private affair with God alone, secure in the belief of our own salvation.

Pentecost was the first great revival adding 3,000 conversions and a wide spread sense of awe and wonder.

The wind and fire of that first Pentecost were abnormal; the new life and joy, fellowship and worship, freedom, boldness and power are not.

We are called to be people of God’s Word, and His word can never be controlled by rationalistic schemes, or contained within tight little frameworks that we invent to keep everything tidy and under control. 

God longs to give His Holy Spirit to people.  Are we willing to ask to be filled?  What He will do when He comes is anyone’s guess.  Be prepared for wind and fire, for some fairly drastic spring-cleaning of the dusty and cold rooms of our lives. we should never doubt that God will give His Spirit to all who seek Him, and the form and direction that any Spirit filled life will take will be, ultimately and assuming obedience and faith, joyful, exciting, dynamic, enabling us to uniquely bring glory to God.

Are we willing to trust our lives fully to God’s loving care or do we still want to keep control? Amen.