What does that mean? - Acts 2:1-21

Introduction

My grandfather, my father's father, had two birthdays. The reason is quite simple: his father took a while to register his birth, and when he finally went, several days later, the clerk recorded the date the birth certificate was issued. My great-grandfather only noticed this when it was too late to change it. So, he had two birthdays, and when my father forgot to wish him a happy birthday on one of them, he could at least make up for it and wish him a happy birthday on his "official" birthday.

So, I ask you the question…

What is the start date of the Connexion Church?

Some will count the date of the first worship service. Others, perhaps, will consider that's when Jason and his family began working on planting this church, therefore before the first service. Others might mention a meeting of several pastors in the Paris region who identified the need for an evangelical church in central Paris, close to major transportation hubs. Still others will say later, when Connexion was registered as a religious association under the 1905 law…

You see, sometimes there are several foundational events. For the entire Christian church, we can cite the choice of the apostles at the beginning of Jesus' ministry, perhaps the death and resurrection of Jesus, but personally, if I had to choose a date as the date of the foundation of the Christian church, I would choose the day of Pentecost, the episode mentioned in today's text.

We're going to look at this episode by examining three questions. First, we see Jesus' disciples gathered in one place, and this event occurs. So the first question we'll ask ourselves is, "Why were they there?" Then, we'll look at the event itself. What happened? To understand the meaning of the event, we'll ask ourselves, "What does this mean?" This is the question the crowd asks in verse 12.

The context

Why were they there?

First, a little context regarding this passage…

This episode takes place approximately 50 days after the death and resurrection of Jesus. After his resurrection, there was a period of about 40 days during which Jesus appeared to the disciples, and then he ascended into heaven – the ascension of Jesus.

Before he ascends to heaven, he gives instructions to the disciples, including the instruction to remain in Jerusalem until they receive “power” from on high. We see this in chapter 1, verse 8, where Jesus says:

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

So this power is linked to their role as witnesses of Jesus, in Jerusalem but also in other places. Therefore, in the text we read, we find disciples gathered in a large house—we can imagine an event hall like this one. There were about 120 of them, men and women.

They were in Jerusalem because Jesus had told them to wait there. But all those other people who were there were there because it was the Feast of Pentecost. The Feast of Pentecost is a Jewish holiday—the Jews call it Shavuot in Hebrew. In ancient Israel, it was a holiday when all Jews were required to go to Jerusalem, which is why all those people, Jews from everywhere, from the entire diaspora, were in Jerusalem at that time.

So, there you have it, we have the disciples of Jesus, who had been waiting in Jerusalem for about 10 days, praying in the same place, and on that day, the day when the city was full - imagine a mix of the Olympics in Paris, with people of many nationalities, and the Fête de la Musique, with people filling the streets.

It's also a date full of symbolism. The Jewish festival of Shavuot is a harvest festival, a festival that celebrates the first wheat harvests of the year. And here, we'll see that it's the time when the church bears its first fruits. But I'm getting ahead of myself…

The event

What happened?

Next, let's look at what happens. The description of the event is very brief, in verses 1 to 6, but full of interesting little details. First, they hear a noise, a noise like that of a violent wind. Wind, in both Greek and Hebrew, is associated with the spirit: they share the same word. Ruach in Hebrew, Pneuma in Greek—both words can mean either wind or spirit.

The disciples were sitting in the house and they saw tongues of fire. Here too, another important vocabulary detail: the word “tongue” here refers to the shape of these flames, which resemble tongues, but also to languages ​​– the different languages.

These languages ​​separate from one another, as if from a single root they diverge and then settle, establish themselves on each person present in this large room, which resembles our own. That alone is already very impressive!

They were all filled with the Holy Spirit. But who is this Holy Spirit? It is not an energy, nor a mysterious force. The Bible presents it to us as God himself: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, one God. The Holy Spirit is God present and active, here and now. In the Old Testament, the Spirit came upon certain people, for a time and for a specific mission: a prophet, a judge, a king. But the prophets foretold a day when God would place his Spirit within his people:"I will give you a new heart, I will put a new spirit in you… I will put my Spirit in you" (Ezekiel 36:26-27) And Jesus, as we have read, had promised this to his disciples. And that is what is happening here: they are filled with the Spirit.

Then, each person gathered began speaking in different languages, idioms they did not know. Some commentators imagine that at this point the disciples left the room, others that part of the crowd outside entered the room. The exact logistical details are not known.

Imagine a room like this, and lots of people passing by in the street outside. Then, there is a group of Elamite pilgrims who say, "Wait, but I hear people speaking Elamite, nobody told me about this meeting," then the same thing with Arabs, Egyptians, Romans, Cretans, etc.

But when they look among the disciples, among the 120, they are all, or almost all, Galileans—provincials, uneducated people. And yet they spoke a dozen different languages! And what's more, these are languages ​​that no one learns. In those days, as today, there were useful languages: Greek, Latin, Aramaic. Today, we can mention English, Spanish, Mandarin. But almost no one will bother to learn a dialect from southern China or an indigenous language of South America. It's the same here: no one learned the language of Phrygia, Cappadocia, or Parthia… unless it was his mother tongue. So we can understand their astonishment!

'How is it then that we hear them, each in our own language, our mother tongue?' (2:8)

They say, in verse 11: "...we hear them speaking in our own language of the wonders of God!"

Wonders of God! We can imagine, from the context, what these are, the same wonders that Peter will later speak of: the fulfillment of the ancient prophecies, the affirmation of the kingdom of God, the salvation and forgiveness of sins through the sacrifice of Jesus, the establishment of the resurrected Jesus as Messiah and King, etc.

With a large number of disciples speaking about these things in several different languages, and even more people in a crowd trying to understand what was happening, the confusion is understandable. The crowd was astonished, surprised, and didn't know what to think.

Some even prefer to mock: rather than paying attention to the languages ​​they can understand, they will pay attention to the noise they cannot understand, to the enthusiasm they did not understand, and they will say “ah, these people are just drunk”.

But others are interested in having the answer to the key question which is in verse 12: “What does this mean?”

The meaning

What does that mean?

This is precisely what Peter is responding to. What does this mean? We can imagine Peter going out into the street, where perhaps they were already outside. First, he responds to the mockers' accusation: no, no one is drunk; it's still early morning. Then he directly answers the question, "What does this mean?" Verse 16: "This is what the prophet Joel spoke of."

Peter could have spoken about Jesus' promise to send the Holy Spirit to Jerusalem. He could have said, "Well, Jesus promised his 120 disciples he would send the Holy Spirit, and here we are, we received it." But he knows that this promise isn't limited to just the 120 disciples. And he now recognizes that this promise isn't just 10 days old, but centuries old. Certainly, some people in the crowd were familiar with the book of the prophet Joel, which was already centuries old at that time.

“I will pour out my Spirit upon every human being.“—said Joel in the third chapter of his book. Over every human being. Behold, this Spirit of God, he speaks to all languages, to all people, to individuals from many different backgrounds. This miracle isn't just a demonstration of power. It's not God showing off his Duolingo skills. This miracle means something.

He shows that these “wonders of God” and this power of the Holy Spirit are not limited to a small group of Galileans. God will pour out his Spirit on every type of human being, of every kind of native language, background, culture, and country.

He continues:“Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams. Yes, upon my servants, both men and women, during those days, I will pour of my Spirit, and they will prophesy.”

There are these merisms, these pairs, “threads”, “girls”, “young people”, “old people”, which are there to indicate that the promise is not limited to one gender or age, but to every type of human being.

They will prophesy - If Peter says that this event at Pentecost is the fulfillment of Joel's prophecy, then it means that those who spoke in other tongues were prophesying. Indeed, they were announcing "wonders of God," and this is, in fact, prophecy.

In the Bible, a prophet is not a soothsayer who predicts the future, like a Nostradamus. Rather, the biblical prophet is a messenger, someone filled with the Spirit of God to announce what God wants them to announce. This echoes what Jesus said: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses.” This testimony, filled with the Spirit, is a prophecy: a knowledge of God, announced and proclaimed according to his will.

Peter, in his preaching, in his explanation of this event, he is prophesying. The other disciples, who proclaim the wonders of God in other languages, were also prophesying. They have now received power, they have been filled with the Holy Spirit, they are now equipped to be witnesses, and they are.

In the quotation from the prophet Joel, Peter continues by speaking of wonders and miraculous signs. Some theologians believe he is referring to what happened at the time of Jesus' crucifixion, when the day grew dark. Others believe he is speaking of the Day of Judgment, which is yet to come.

In both cases, Peter shows that the coming of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost advanced the timeline of creation. We are in “the last days,” as Peter says. This is the window of time between the resurrection of Jesus and the coming of the Holy Spirit, on the one hand, and the complete renewal of all things and the judgment, on the other. The time between these two moments is “the last days”—a time when everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

This “name of the Lord” here, for Peter, is Jesus, the Lord Jesus - he makes this very clear in the rest of the chapter, for example in verses 33 and 36. It is Jesus who pours out the Holy Spirit on his servants and who fulfills the prophecy of Joel.

Meaning for us

What does this mean for us?

This passage is the very beginning of the Church. It's the first apostolic Christian sermon. And I invite you to read the rest—it makes you want to read it to the end, but that would be a bit much for this service.

This is the beginning of a story we are part of today. The beginning of the Book of Acts, a book which, if you look at the end a few pages later, you will see that it doesn't really have an ending, and no one wanted to create an ending for this book because what begins at Pentecost is not finished. On the contrary, it continues to unfold.

Here, the miracle of the Galileans, who testified to God's wonders in several languages, foreshadows a near future where people of many nationalities, ethnicities, and native languages ​​will testify to God's wonders in multiple languages. If you have ever wondered what the sacred language of Christianity is—whether it is Greek, Latin, English, or French—well, I can tell you that the sacred language of Christianity is your native language, for God has sanctified it by having the Holy Spirit prophesy God's wonders in your native tongue.

This is not only the fulfillment of the prophecies of Joel, but also of other prophets, such as Micah, who speaks of God’s people present among all nations.

Therefore, no nationality, gender, or background allows us to say, “Oh, but that person can’t receive the Holy Spirit,” or “Oh, but because they are X or Y, that person will never be a Christian.” You cannot say that about someone. You cannot say that about yourself. No culture, no background, no gender, no age, no past experience, no physical or psychological condition excludes anyone from the possibility of receiving the Holy Spirit, insofar as everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved and receive the Spirit of Christ.

In this community you have the typical example: people from many different backgrounds, origins or life stories.

And sometimes we may be tempted to seek the comfort of a church with people who are like us, who have the same profile, the same age, the same culture. This is a natural reaction, and sometimes it's wise (for example, it's important that everyone in a service can understand the language being sung and preached), and sometimes, it must be said, it's a shortsightedness that fails to see the richness of the powerful work of the Holy Spirit being poured out on people who are not like us.

I invite you, I invite us, to see the church of Christ, here and wherever it gathers, in the same way that Peter sees it here: as a fulfillment of God's prophecies; as a community of people who can prophesy the wonders of God in Jesus Christ; as a community of all kinds of people who are living in the last days, who call upon the name of the Lord, and who are therefore saved.

We should be able to look at the church, ask ourselves the question "what does this mean?", and find the answer in the work of God and his word.

This foundational event, on the day of Pentecost, may seem much more impressive than our daily life in the church, but we still bear the same witness and we are still the fulfillment of the same promises, and I dare say that they are all the more concretely fulfilled now than at the time of Peter's preaching.