Sermon text: Acts 2:1–21
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
It’s Pentecost Day. Today we celebrate the Christian version of the feast of Pentecost. It’s a unique event, and as such there’s still a lot of confusion about what it all means, and questions if things like this still happen and go on in the church. Is this the normal way in which the church does business, or is it unique unto itself? Highlighting just how different it is by the things that happened during this first church service of the New Testament era.
The New Testament inherited the Old Testament practice or festival of the feast of Shavuot, also known as the festival of weeks, as in days of the weeks. The Old Testament version of Pentecost was a harvest festival, also called the harvest of the firstfruits. Deuteronomy 16:9–10 commands the Israelites to observe this holiday: “You shall count seven weeks. Begin to count the seven weeks from the time the sickle is first put to the standing grain. Then you shall keep the Feast of Weeks to the LORD your God with the tribute of a freewill offering from your hand, which you shall give as the LORD your God blesses you.”
The Greek name for the celebration is in fact Pentecost, which means 50. It is called Pentecost because it’s 50 days after the resurrection of Jesus Christ. They simply repurposed the Old Testament festival for New Testament purposes. The festival took place 50 days after the resurrection of Jesus. And in time, regarding the Jews, the sacrificial system faded away, mostly because the temple itself was destroyed in 70 A.D., and no longer was it the center of religious life for the Jew. So the Jews repurposed the feast of Pentecost, the feast of Shavuot, to celebrate the giving of the Torah to Moses.
Now, as for the Christian church: Christians recognize that Jesus’s death on the cross paid for the sins of every man, every woman, every child, of every age, of every generation, and in every location, and in every language, and in every nation. Jesus’s payment for the sins of the world was total and complete. In His words, “It is finished.” And Jesus’s resurrection proved that the acceptable sacrifice was in fact acceptable to the Lord God, Father and Holy Spirit. The Father was satisfied with Jesus’s life and death, that it atoned for the sins of every man, woman, and child, and it opened heaven to every man, woman, and child who called upon the name of the Lord.
Yet, there was more to be done, because unless men, women, and children, wherever and whenever they were, heard the good news of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection, and were themselves endowed with faith, no one could be saved. That’s where Pentecost comes in. Starting on the day of Pentecost and continuing on every day since, the Word and the Holy Spirit continue to come down upon the church, to move the church to do what still needs to be done for the world: that is, to bear witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Thus verse one: “When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind.” The Greek word for that is pnoe. It filled the entire house where they were sitting. In the Old Testament, the coming of God is almost always associated with a powerful wind. And we learned that in several places in the Old Testament, one of them being Psalm 18:8–10: “Smoke went up from his nostrils, and devouring fire from his mouth; glowing coals flamed forth from him. He bowed the heavens and came down; thick darkness was under his feet. He rode on a cherub and flew; he came swiftly on the wings of the wind.” Also note the imagery of fire pre-signaling what would happen on Pentecost day in the New Testament era.
The wind of the Lord is also mentioned in connection with the Red Sea. 2 Samuel 22:16: “Then the channels of the sea were seen; the foundations of the world were laid bare, at the rebuke of the LORD, at the blast of the breath of his nostrils.” There’s also a strong connection between wind and spirit. In Hebrew, the word for wind is ruach, and in Greek, pneuma. They both mean spirit, but they also both mean wind, both in Greek and Hebrew. Jesus Himself makes the connection between His coming, the Holy Spirit’s coming, the word of God’s coming, and the recipient. He said, “Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
The wind is also a life-giving and life-sustaining force. This is what the Holy Spirit brings: the breath of life in creation and in the re-creation called the church and every Christian in it. By delivering the gifts of the person and work of Jesus Christ to sinners through faith, the Holy Spirit brings us to the new birth and new life. And miraculously, 15 centuries before Pentecost Day, a mighty wind had blown the people free from slavery in Egypt. And miraculously, God had completed Israel’s exodus from Egypt, giving them a new life in a new covenant in the Old Testament.
The Exodus gave Israel new freedom to do the work of the Old Testament church. What Christ has won, or finished, as He would say on the cross, the Spirit now delivers through the means of grace: through the work of the church, through the means of grace provided by a living and active congregation who believes the word and carries out the commission given to her. The Spirit brings us through waters of our own: Baptism — from the slavery to sin, and to a new life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Baptism creates saving faith in Jesus, who works faith in our heart to receive the forgiveness of sins, life and salvation.
Verse three: “And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.” This is the only place — Acts 2:3 — where we find in the New Testament the phrase, or the distinguishing mark, called “tongues of fire.” It’s referred to as an organ of speech, the tongue, or what is spoken of, namely the gospel. And it’s included, or a conversation about tongues is held, in 1 Corinthians 12–14, which raises a lot of confusion in the church.
Some people think it’s a bunch of divine-given gibberish that makes no sense to anybody unless somebody else standing next to them has, quote, the gift of interpretation. But tongues in the Greek means language. That’s how it’s used. That’s the context in the three Bible verses: the Acts 2:3–11 today and the 1 Corinthians 12–14. It’s very clear in the context of what is written that the languages are the languages of foreign nations. People who speak in a different tongue all of a sudden on Pentecost could hear in their own native language — each one according to his nation and his language could now understand the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Where there’s a connection between Pentecost and this phenomenon of speaking in tongues: that is the apostolic era. This is a sign given for a very specific purpose, namely to preview and to highlight the Spirit’s inspired work of bringing the gospel to all peoples. That fire would accompany the coming of the Holy Spirit, as prophesied by John the Baptist: “I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”
As for fire on Pentecost, fire is a purifier. It is implied in the judgment text of both Old and New Testament that the church and the world will undergo a period of fire. Fire burns away the impurities, leaving what is good and strong behind. Malachi 3:3: “He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the LORD.” The fire of the Holy Spirit burns away the impurities in our faith, enabling us to receive the forgiveness of all sins.
Fire is also the sign of the last day. Jesus speaks of the fire that He must cast upon the earth in Luke 12:49: “I came to cast fire on the earth, and would that it were already kindled!” The Holy Spirit’s work: to burn away impurity, both individually in the life of a Christian and in the world, as He prepares it for His return.
Next, we consider the word “pour out” in the text this morning. “And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy.” Ekcheo is the word translated “pour out.” And there’s two primary uses for this verb in the biblical text. The first one is the shedding of the blood of Jesus, as we find it in the words of institution: “Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” The second use is the pouring out of the Holy Spirit itself in the waters of Holy Baptism. “He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior.” Here the pouring out of the Spirit is connected with the washing of Holy Baptism, where baptism creates faith in Christ.
The Spirit ushers in also the last days for the church. Amid all the excitement of the wind and the fire and the apostles speaking in many and various ways the languages of Pentecost, Peter declares to the crowd that this activity is a sign of the last days. Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them — that is, the multitude: “Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and give ear to my words. For these people are not drunk, as you suppose — see, they have a sense of humor — since it is only the third hour of the day. But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel.”
Now, the prophet Joel had prophesied that the Spirit would come in the last days. With Jesus’s work finished on the cross, resurrected on Easter morning, and the Spirit now being poured out, the church began living in the last days. The last days are the time between the ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ and His second coming on the last day. That means we are in the last days. We are living in the great tribulation. And the last days and the great tribulation call upon us to repent, to prepare for the coming of our Lord.
In Peter’s first sermon of the apostolic age, he’s calling on all hearers to take a sober, realistic look at themselves and their own lives, and to repent of all and every kind of sin. This is the appropriate response to Peter’s sermon. It’s the appropriate response to the day of Pentecost on Pentecost Sunday. The Spirit has come down to sanctify us, God’s church. Fire symbolizes that sanctification and purification. The fire of Pentecost purifies God’s people. So it comes to rest on them in a visible form as tongues of fire, indicating that the spoken word of God — the law and the gospel as preached and taught by the apostles — is the thing that actually makes us clean. When we repent, our impurities are burned away, seen no more. And when we dwell in Christ’s holiness and righteousness, we then live forever.
The Spirit comes down to reverse sin and punishment of the Tower of Babel. Fallen humanity had made a mess. They sought to build a tower to heaven. They wanted to make themselves out to be gods themselves who could do anything they set their mind to. As one of the punishments for this hubris, God confused their language and scattered the people across the earth. Now, think of all the confusion, alienation, rivalries, and distrust that our sinful separation and our language divisions have brought to the world because of what the people did at the Tower of Babel. The tongues were confused at Babel and now been set right on Pentecost. Each person now hears the gospel in his own language from the mouth of an apostle, because the apostles had been given the ability miraculously to speak in the Cretan’s tongue, in the Greek and Roman tongue, in whatever tongue they needed for the people in the group to hear. It was a language not of their own.
The Spirit has come to send the church — you and me — out into the world to speak what the apostles have given us to speak. Pentecost is as much about doctrine as it is about the Holy Spirit. It’s all based on the belief that the apostles have been rightly taught by Jesus Christ Himself, and that they are preaching the very words of God and bringing people to true Christian faith through the means of grace, and having them receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit: principally the forgiveness of all sins.
So there on Pentecost, in every language: the creeds are spoken, the Lord’s Prayer is spoken, the Scriptures are cited, the liturgies of the church are spoken — different languages, but all one same confession, the one true God: the Nicene Creed, the Apostles’ Creed, and the like. Because of Pentecost scattering the nations of the earth, it’s a challenge to bring them all into the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. Every man, woman, and child of every age, of every language, of every nation who call upon the name of the Lord are being united, even though they’ve been scattered abroad, into one holy catholic universal Christian church. “For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
That includes you. It includes our sister in Christ. It includes all who come and are baptized, who live and die in true Christian faith: where salvation is by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone, for Christ’s sake alone. And that’s what they preach on Pentecost Sunday. And you, as a member of this congregation, confess that Christ is indeed your one true Savior, and that the Holy Spirit dwells in the temple of your body, and that you are an adopted child of God the Father, brother to Jesus Christ. All of that is in Pentecost, and all of that is here today, for your sins are forgiven. Amen.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.