"What Does This Mean?"

The first things the people of Jerusalem were aware of on the Day of Pentecost telling them that this day was different were those three signs, the sound like the howling of a mighty wind, secondly, what seemed to be tongues of fire separating and remaining on the disciples and yet they were not burned, and, thirdly, the fact that they had a miraculous ability to preach and praise God fluently in a bewildering variety of languages. Neither the exaltation of Christ, nor the actual coming of the Holy Spirit, nor the preaching of Peter were events that demoralized the crowds in the city, taking their thoughts from everything and anything else. It was the combination of these three signs which continued for a considerable time and gripped the entire attention of the multitudes. Any one of those signs would have disturbed them. They longed to know what in the world was happening. “What does this mean?” they cried out (v.12).

I think it is quite legitimate to believe that the disciples were gathered together in one of the porches of the temple at this time. It would have been a natural place for pilgrims at a feast to assemble together. I doubt whether a dwelling house in Jerusalem would have been large enough to contain 120 people. The “whole house” mentioned here (v.2) would then be the house of God, the temple, and the resulting crowd of many thousands of people were those who pressed together into that part of the temple to hear Peter explain what all this meant.

So the Spirit comes majestically and very publicly. There is no Messianic secrecy any longer. It would have been unthinkable for God the Holy Spirit to have been sent by the risen Lord Jesus for the first time, and in such abundance, without an entire community being humbled by the overwhelming and fearful reality of God. We usually define a mighty work of God in terms of [i] powerful preaching which results in the conviction of sin, [ii] many people being converted, and [iii] the fear of God falling upon the surrounding world. These three signs in Acts 2 all testify of this. Wind and fire are perilous phenomena, while possessing a language is to have power. The howling of the wind and the flames of fire and the multitude of languages being spoken told the world, “Something divine and dynamic and dangerous has come to Jerusalem today. God lives!” So let us do two things, consider the meaning of the signs and also the meaning of the event. Let us begin by examining;

1. THE MEANING OF THE SIGNS.

i] The Blowing of a Violent Wind. “Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting” (v.2). There was the howling of a wind first of all. Was it just the sound without any wind at all? Was it a normal hot day in Jerusalem, the temperature in the 90’s accompanied by a kind of background siren, the sound of a wind? Or was there a wind blowing, but what was outstanding was the sound that this wind made, as no other they had ever heard? My inclination is to believe there was a mighty wind but what was striking was its unearthly wail.

We were watching ten days ago on a vast IMAX screen a film of the hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans two years ago. We saw people blown off their feet, cyclists knocked off their bikes by gusts of wind, trucks (what does the BBC call them? ‘High-sided vehicles’) toppled over, and roofs lifted off houses and boats blown out of the sea into fields. Where had this Jerusalem wind come from? Was it a north wind, a wind from the desert or from the sea? None of those places. From Jesus! The same risen one who had blown on some of them one long breath of his lungs in the Upper Room was now blowing and blowing his Spirit from heaven upon all of his people. “Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting” (v.2). God was breathing upon them. You remember the first reference to the Spirit of God in Genesis 1? The Spirit of God was hovering over the waters that covered the whole world. In that chaotic darkness the Spirit was there in control, and he is here in dark Jerusalem that had crucified its Messiah. Then we are told that God formed man of the dust of the earth and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living creature. The God in control of creation; the God who gave life to our first parents – that God is now breathing from heaven upon his people, breathing into them new life and power. The body of Adam had been given life by the breath of God; the body of Christ, the church, was now being given life by the breath of God.

You can experience a very powerful wind but hear nothing at all, but on this occasion it was howling! It would have covered the people who came running to the group of disciples with the accumulated dust of the forty years of Herod’s temple, and lifting men’s long flowing robes; it was not a draft, and not a breeze. There was noise; there was violence; this was a force ten wind. They’d never encountered a gale like this. It was out of this world. You were glad to hang on to one of the pillars of the temple to keep your footing.

Normally a mighty wind disrupts and destroys and separates you from your possessions, but this wind didn’t bring havoc but order. You remember the prophet Ezekiel seeing the wind from heaven blowing through a valley of dry bones. Before the coming of the wind the bones of that valley were like an old ice-cream box full of pieces of Lego – utterly chaotic; after the wind from heaven had blown the Lego pieces had been assembled into a vast army like the Chinese Terra-cotta soldiers – but alive! The bones were in order and clothed and living. That is what the wind of God can do. Jehovah was there in the temple just as he was when he finally addressed Job in a great wind (Job 38:1).

The wind is absolutely sovereign. We cannot command it to come on a hot day and cool our brows. It blows where it pleases. So this wind came “suddenly”; it came at God’s time. There is nothing you can do to make God send a wind from heaven. There is no formula; no tricks certainly; but no regimen of activities or rigorous self-denials the result of which will bring gales from heaven blowing around us. Would that it were so! No, the Lord will suddenly come to his temple. Those heavenly nuptials at the return of the Son to the bosom of Father and Spirit had ended. The Son had been enthroned and given all authority in heaven and earth. At that moment, when the day of Pentecost had fully come, he spoke to the Spirit, “Now go!” and he came. This is the Spirit who can’t be organised and manipulated by men.

ii] The Tongues of Fire. The fire, as much as the wind and the languages, came from heaven. These three signs did not come from the depths of people’s own sub-consciousness. They did not come out of their body life together as they all held hands. The wind and fire and tongues all came from beyond themselves and quite outside of themselves. They had not stayed in Jerusalem pleading for a heavenly wind because they hadn’t been promised that a wind was coming. They didn’t agonize for fire to come because they didn’t know that fire was going to rest on them, and they didn’t beseech God for the gift of tongues, did they? Those signs came down to them as a matter of pure vertical sovereign grace. They were gifts; they were not earned by agony.

So we are told that suddenly they found “what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them” (v.3). They looked at one another and saw 120 flickering flames of fire resting on each one. You understand it was not that they were all standing together as if in the midst of a furnace, but individual cleft flames were resting on each one - like the flame of one of their oil lamps. Normally fire consumes and destroys, but here there were no hideous, deforming burns. Where do you meet phenomena like that? Think of the three young men in Babylon cast into the burning fiery furnace and yet unscarred, able to walk in those flames with the Son of Man. God can do that. Think of Moses confronted by a bush in the desert; it burned with fire but it was not consumed. God had come to Moses to charge him to take his word to Egypt and redeem his people from bondage.

Here in Jerusalem is the beginning of the new redemption; cosmic deliverance from the slavery of sin and the kingdom of darkness and Pharisaism in Israel. The message of the gospel is going to save thousands of men and women and bring them into the glorious liberty of the people of God, and so the church is given the life of God. The cloven tongues of fire say, “Don’t you dare to be luke-warm, but be burning and shining lights for the Lord like John the Baptist was.” The fire is saying, “The flames resting on you are shaped like a tongue so that you speak up brightly for Jesus.”

Why is fire a suitable symbol of God? It says that God has his own life in himself. God has no need of some external life-support system to keep him going. He has no need ever to check his fuel gauge, no need for a reserve tank for refueling because his supplies are running out. Heaven’s reservoir of gifts and graces are immeasurably inexhaustible. Everyone else and everything else depends on other resources; not God. In him is life, and he has that life in himself.

Again, fire is a symbol of God in his august purity. Our God is a consuming fire. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. When the Christ comes, John preaches, he will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire. If he comes into your life it is not to do a slight rearranging of the rooms of your heart, a lick of paint, a moving of the settee to a different corner, the hanging of a new religious painting. Fire from heaven is coming. When the children in Narnia asked whether Aslan the lion was safe, the response was, ‘Safe? No, he is not safe, but he is good.’ Holiness is dangerous, sinners in the hands of an angry God are not at ease. For who shall abide the day of his coming, and who will stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire. Those are Malachi’s words, and yet this holy flame is resting on the whole people of God in the temple and they are safe. The heavenly baptism with the Spirit and fire does not destroy anything good in any beleiver. “Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy” (Phils 4:8) then none such things will be destroyed when you become a Christian, when you bring them to Jesus, for you must bring everything to him. But he will purify you from all your inner idols, and from the sin that so easily besets you. He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.

But when God comes very near, and the fire rests on the disciples, entering their lives these people are not consumed. Why? You know why. It is because the full fire of destruction for our sins has been taken by Jesus. He has entered the lake of fire bearing all our trashy deeds and words. The guilt and wrath which our sins deserved has consumed our Saviour in that cosmic incinerator as he hung in our place. The holy Judge has borne the fires of condemnation and exhausted it so now the heavenly fire of the Spirit can rest on us and we are safe! All in Christ need not fear the wrath of the eternal burnings in the place of woe.

So here was another sign of God coming upon his people. Here was another divine credential that these people were God’s authorized spokemen. The baptism of the Holy Spirit was a baptism of fire. The God who answers by fire he is God. The Sadducees had had the Jerusalem temple in their pockets for a couple of centuries and they’d never known fire falling from heaven. They were too concerned to keep up the temple taxes and maintain their special deals with money-changers and sellers of animals for sacrifice at extortionate prices. They had turned the house of God into a robbers’ den. They were as far from God as the prophets of Baal. No fire fell when they cried to their god. But the living Lord who sent fire on the sacrifice of his servant Elijah sent fire on his servants in Jerusalem. Jesus Christ came to bring fire on the earth. This must be the perennial symbol of the Christian faith, the tongue of fire.

iii] The Gift of Languages. We are told that they “began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them” (v.4), and the crowd cried out to one another, “how is it that each of us hears them in his own native language?” (v.8). This was definitely not some ecstatic speech, in other words it was not gibberish. The people who had traveled there from all over the Mediterranean basin discovered that they could understand what these men were saying as they gave thanks and glory to God for Jesus Christ. “They are speaking in my language,” they said to their fellow pilgrims. “Yes, and in mine too.” “And in mine.” “And in mine.” How could that be? The disciples were largely from the country area of Galilee. They weren’t international businessmen, and they weren’t speaking the lingua franca, Greek. The disciples could speak Greek; Peter later wrote a couple of letters in very good Greek, but they didn’t use the common language. They praised and preached in these minority languages, Parthian, Mede, Elam, Cappadocian, Libyan, Crete and so on, forgotten, dead languages today. Fifteen language groups are mentioned in this chapter from distant Iran to west of Rome. In fact there was not a language spoken in Jerusalem at that time that was not being spoken in the name of Jesus by the servants of God at Pentecost. In all the known languages of the known world the mighty works of the Lord were spoken.

The wind from heaven was a sign. The cloven tongues resting upon them was a wonder. The speaking in a language they had not know before was a mighty work. What was the purpose of this miracle? There were all kinds of barriers in the ancient world as there are in our world, barriers raised by race, and language, and slavery, and poverty, and discrimination against unwanted babies and women. The Holy Spirit was coming to break down those walls. Henceforth all those who possessed the Spirit would be one in Christ Jesus.

In Genesis 11 God’s judgment came upon the builders of the tower of Babel who thought they could reach God by erecting a very tall tower. God judged them by taking away their common language. None could understand another and the building of the tower ceased. The spread of Greek and of Latin had failed to bring unity to that divided world, but by the work of the Spirit there would be unity. People of all languages would be singing from the same hymn-sheet. They would be united into one body by one Spirit with one hope of their calling, with one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of them all. So the gift of languages said, “The differences in language are not going to keep us from being brothers and sisters.” It said, “Our brotherhood is not going to be through Greek or Latin or anything men say or do, or anything that Caesar does. It will be through this miraculous work of God in our lives.” Roman said to Jew, “My brother.” Mede said to Elamite, “My brother.” Instead of the bricks of Babel there would be a new temple of living stones in Jerusalem.

Also this gift of languages there in the very temple in Jerusalem was a sign of judgment on Jewish unbelief. You remember how when Paul deals with speaking in languages in I Corinthians 14:21 and 22 he cites the prophecy of Isaiah 28:11 and 12; “Through men of strange tongues and through the lips of foreigners I will speak to this people, but even then they will not listen to me.” It happened in the Old Testament era when Babylonians came in and commanded walled Jerusalem to open its gates and surrender. Yet the city refused though it was God’s will they go off to exile for seventy years.

It happened again here in Jerusalem when the Jewish leaders, Pharisees and Sadducees, rejected and killed the Messiah and the command to execute him was spoken in Lat in or Greek through the lips of a foreigner, Pilate. Then God spoke to the unbelieving Jews of Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost in the very house of God through strange tongues. It was a sign to unbelieving Jews of coming judgment on them and on their temple, when the Roman army would tear it to the ground stone by stone and the Wailing Wall alone would be left standing. The gift of languages was a sign of condemnation on unbelievers, on Messiah-crucifying and unbelieving Jewry, that the Old Testament covenant people had rejected God the Son, but Gentiles in abundance would yet honour him as Lord, singing his praises in their own languages.

Again the gift of languages was a sign of the church’s mission to be a proclaiming church. The gift of languages was not given to lighten the burden of the missionary in becoming fluent in the language of the people where God had sent him to labour. For this overwhelmingly Jewish group of 120 people, from the very beginning of the coming of the Spirit from Christ, they knew that henceforth they had to become familiar with speaking in many languages about their Lord Jehovah and his Son Jesus of Nazareth. “Wait in Jerusalem,” he had told them, “until you are endued with power.” But what was this power for? So that they could dominate the world, build a global empire centred on Jerusalem, and have scores of people doing their bidding? No, it was that they could spread the message of the Messiah to the utmost corners of the earth. The Spirit of God’s purpose is for all the world to understand his greatness; he desires his glory to be made known among the nations. Bear witness from Jerusalem, to Judea and Samaria and to the uttermost ends of the earth. That is what this gift is saying, and that is why Luke gives us this laborious list of the peoples of the world who were in the temple; “Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs” (vv.9-11).

At Pentecost we are being prepared for this whole book of Acts and the story of the spread of the church. No longer, and never again, will there be one exclusive nation favoured by God. There had been the middle wall of partition in the great courtyard before the temple, and up to that wall the Gentile converts were permitted to walk - but no further. The Jews alone were allowed to pass beyond it and nearer to the house of God. That was the wall that had been destroyed by our great Colossus, Jesus Christ, as effectively as the Berlin wall has been demolished, when our Lord became the Lamb of God and took away the world’s sins. Now Jews and Gentiles, young and old, men and women might run right past those warning signs attached to that old wall threatening death to the trespassers, and on they would go and into the temple, but further! Even through the torn veil they could run, into the very presence of God in the holiest of all and there they would joyfully cry, “Abba, Father!” I am saying that the miraculous gift of languages prepares us for the book of Acts, and for the letters of the New Testament and the gospels - all written in a Gentile language, Greek, and the spread of the gospel to the ends of the earth. So there are the three signs at Pentecost, and so let me now draw those strands together and proceed to:

2. THE MEANING OF THE EVENT.

i] The Spirit of God is going to be poured out upon all flesh. Here is the central idea of these last days, this dispensation of the Spirit in which we live. Peter quotes the Scripture that has been fulfilled, “This is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh” (vv. 16&17). On “Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs” (vv.9-11). Jews and Arabs are both recipients of the Spirit. He is to be poured out on all such peoples and they show it by repenting and believing. From this moment on the people of God are going to be found everywhere in the world.

Consider the place in the world where the church is growing fastest today, China. About sixty years ago Chairman Mao and the Gang of Four tried to stamp out all vestiges of traditional Chinese religion and any kind of Chinese Christian religion. They thought they’d succeeded, but the church had gone underground and began to multiply. Then in the 1980s the ban was lifted and Westerners began to enter China and what they met was astonishing. They found that not only had the church survived but it had thrived. From a small beginning, and for decades when its spread was very slow, with terrible years of persecution, the church had multiplied. No one knows how many Christians there are in China today, 50 million, perhaps even a hundred million. It displays the fastest growth in the world, and the fastest in the entire history of the church. Here are a people equipped with just what the New Testament Christians had, godly living, prayer and a knowledge of the gospel, and that has been the means the Spirit of God has used, and they have known God’s blessing. May many in Beijing this Olympic month hear the gospel and believe on the Lord Jesus. May the Banner of Truth’s plans to begin an extensive translation programme into Chinese know the blessing of God’s Spirit.

ii] The Spirit of God is going to recover the whole world from its darkness and shame. There were hints and prophecies of this in the Old Testament, but the main responsibility during the Mosaic economy was keeping the seed alive. One evil king followed another, one false prophet after another rose up. The ten northern tribes disappeared completely. The two southern tribes went off into exile in Babylon for seventy years. Would the seed survive through such a long, dark, cold winter? On the Day of Pentecost the time of planting was announced, and very quickly a great tree began to shoot up and the birds of the air came and nested in its branches. For centuries there had been leaven hidden away in Israel but now the day of mixing it with the flour has come and see how it rises and grows. The stream of grace in Israel was a little trickle that had been damned up for centuries, but now it began to overflow from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria and it starts to fill the earth. The light of the Messiah had been hidden under a bushel for centuries, but at Pentecost the bushel was removed and the beams of light shone out and filled the world.

iii] The kingdom of God is henceforth thoroughly spiritual. The badger’ skins, and the boxes of shittim wood, and the prohibitions about seething a kid in its mother’s milk and the need to go to the city of Jerusalem three times a year for feasts, and the need of circumcision and all similar ordinances, judges and kings and priests and levites are all gone for ever. The Mosaic economy is over. The people don’t need to be treated like children any longer taught about holiness by clean and unclean foods, and not mixing two kinds of fabric; “touch not, taste not, handle not” – such prohibitions are all over. Now they have the kingdom of God within them; its law is written on their hearts; they have an inward energy and inward desire to do God’s will. The church fathers said this, that wherever the Spirit of God is at work there is the church of God.

Let me show you a startling contrast between old covenant and the new covenant. The law was given from Sinai in Exodus 20 and then in Exodus 32 there is a record of a rebellion, a golden calf was made and the people danced around it crying “These are your gods O Israel.” The people were running wild, but all the Levites rallied to Moses. He told them to strap swords to their sides and go through the camp and each one was to kill his brother and friend and neighbour who worships the golden calf. So it was, and on that day about three thousand of the people were put to death. That was an old covenant discipline situation which is utterly alien to new covenant practice. At Pentecost the weapons of the church’s warfare were obviously not carnal weapons were they? Peter did not cry for vengeance for the murder of the Lord Jesus did he? There cannot be any more jihads and no more holy wars in the dispensation of the Spirit. Our breastplate is one of righteousness and our shield is faith. Peter used the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God and as he applied it three thousand of them were cut to their hearts and by that sword they lived for ever. And whenever the church of God has abandoned the word and brought in the inquisition, and the stake, and the weapons of torture and put to death those of whom it disapproved then the Spirit of God has abandoned it.

iv] The Spirit of God is now at work far more powerfully than in the Mosaic dispensation. I have no doubt that the Spirit of God was not dormant in Old Testament times, that he was regenerating and sanctifying the minds of the remnant in Israel, renewing their hearts. How else would Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego have been so brave and chosen to be burned to death in a furnace rather than bow before the idol? The Spirit of God was empowering them. Yet there is the promise in the last days of all the people of God receiving the Spirit, not just the kings and prophets and priests in particular who were spiritually gifted during the old dispensation, but now even servants, both male and female, were to be filled with the Spirit. The church would be a fellowship of saints; Christ would present it to himself as a holy church without spot or wrinkle or any such thing.

You know that in April last year three fine Christian men in Turkey were murdered in an unspeakably horrible manner by five young Muslims because they worked for a Bible Society and sent out Bibles all over Turkey. Was that a tragedy? No, it wasn’t a tragedy. Let me tell you about a tragedy. There are religious men and women in Wales who spend all their evenings watching television. There are those who take early retirement and they leave the churches which they’ve led since they were young marrieds to sit for years in the sunshine of the Costa del Sol, but, they say, “We go to a weekly Bible Study.” That is a tragedy. There are Christians who are more excited and enthusiastic about cultural matters than the gospel of Jesus Christ being heard by other men and women. That is a tragedy.

At Pentecost God’s purpose was to equip his church with an energy that came from heaven so that it would be his witness to all the nations, and sinners would be delivered from the broad road and begin to walk the way that leads to life.

Let me ask you in the light of Pentecost some questions. I read them in a Steve Cole sermon and they searched me;

A] Is my focus on God’s glory in all things? Did I even think about that as I went through last week? Did I determine how I would resist temptation, and seek to grow in knowledge, and ask for help in speaking to others?

B] Is my passion that the nations would glorify God through the gospel? If my heart does not have a longing that lost people be saved then can I claim that my heart is in tune with the Lord’s? He wept over Jerusalem sinners.

C] Is my daily life consciously dependent on the Holy Spirit? Am I walking in step with the Spirit each day? Would I have missed him if he had withdrawn from me during this entire past week? Am I leaning on him for self-control, and courage, and wisdom, and purity of life and power to obey God?

D] Am I waiting on providence to open a door for me day by day to say some words, and do some actions and words which will help men and women without Christ to see the Saviour? The power of the Spirit is not given to me to make me feel happy, but to make me a holier man so that my life counts for Christ. That should be the meaning of Pentecost for you and me.

10^th August 2008 GEOFF THOMAS