Pentecost is remembered as the day the church was born.
Yet Pentecost is much more, revealing what the church was, is, and will continue to be until all the redeemed are gathered in eternal praise around the throne of God.
In the events of that day, we see how the church is to proclaim the gospel: by the power of the Spirit, for the sake of the nations, and in the languages of the nations.
What was Pentecost?
The second chapter of Acts opens with the disciples gathered on the day of Pentecost. Pentecost was a major festival in the Jewish religious calendar.
The festival is called Pentecost in Greek based on the Greek word for fiftieth, referring to the fiftieth day after the second day of Passover. In Hebrew, however, the festival is called Shavuot.
At Pentecost, pilgrims traveled to Jerusalem to present a free-will offering. This offering was to commemorate the completion of the grain harvest.
In the narrative in Acts, Jesus Christ tells His disciples to wait for the promised Holy Spirit in Jerusalem (Acts 1:4). He also says that when the Spirit came, they were to be His witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the remotest part of the earth (Acts 1:8). After telling His disciples these things, He ascended into heaven.
On the day of Pentecost, early in the morning, the disciples were gathered in a house, possibly the same house they had been in since the Passover. Likely they were all present—more than one hundred and twenty—to worship and observe the festival.
A New Pentecost
While they were sitting together, a sound like rushing wind came down and filled the whole house. Tongues of fire appeared, resting above each of their heads. The Holy Spirit had descended and was among them. Then the Spirit moved them to speak in languages they didn’t know.
It appears that they moved from their house into the street and toward the temple, with a new kind of offering—an offering of praise and testimony about Jesus Christ. As they moved through the streets proclaiming the “mighty deeds of God”, pilgrims from various nations recognized that these Jews were speaking their own languages.
By the time they reached the temple, there was a great stir and much amazement. The pilgrims realized that the disciples were speaking the languages of the Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, referring to the languages of the Parthian Empire such as Aramaic and Parthian.
Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia are included. Pilgrims from these regions of modern-day Turkey may have spoken Greek, Galatian, and Armenian. And Rome, Cyrene, Egypt, and Arabia are also mentioned. Jews and converts alike come from these regions, probably speaking Latin, Greek, Coptic, and Arabic.
While the pilgrims were amazed to see such praise in their own languages from the lips of Jews who didn’t belong to their groups, others mocked them.
A New Message at Pentecost
At this moment, Peter addressed the mockers, who were primarily Jews from Judea and Jerusalem. It’s not surprising that these Jews were the most offended, since they were used to pilgrims coming to celebrate in the language of Jerusalem, not the languages of the nations.
Peter first dismissed the charge that his fellow disciples were drunk by noting it was only 9:00 am in the morning. He announced that the events of that morning were nothing less than the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
Then Peter launched into a message about Jesus Christ, calling the audience to repent and be baptized in His name. No doubt, the other disciples also exhorted the crowds to put their faith in Jesus.
By the end of the day, approximately three thousand were baptized. On that day, the church was born.
Reflecting on the events recorded in Acts 2, we can make three key observations about the church and the proclamation of the gospel.
1. The church proclaimed the gospel by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Before ascending to heaven, Jesus told His disciples to wait for the Spirit, and with the power of the Spirit, they would be his witnesses (Luke 24:49, Acts 1:8). The disciples are instructed not to attempt this task in their own strength, but to wait for the power of the Spirit.
On the day of Pentecost, Peter proclaimed in Acts 2:33 that he and his fellow disciples had “received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit” and that it was the Spirit that “poured forth this that you both see and hear.”
Peter understood that the Spirit brought about the events of that day. It was not their strength or planning, but the Spirit’s work as a fulfillment of Christ’s promise. And it was, ultimately, a fulfillment of God’s prophetic message from Joel.
With the promised Spirit came power, but not just any power. It was the power to prophesy. In this context, it was the power to preach the message of God boldly.
Peter also noted that the Spirit was giving all of the disciples, both men and women, the power to prophesy. To that end, he quoted the prophet Joel in Acts 2:17: “even upon my bond slaves, both men and women, I will in those days pour forth of my spirit and they shall prophesy.”
2. The church proclaimed the gospel to the nations.
Before returning to the Father, Jesus reminded the disciples that they would be His witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the remotest parts of the earth (Acts 1:4). In so doing, He was reiterating His directive for them to make all nations His disciples (Matt 28:18).
A few weeks earlier, when Jesus appeared to His disciples on a mountain in Galilee, He declared that He had all authority in heaven and on earth. With that authority, He commissioned His disciples to go to the nations and make disciples from among all of them, both baptizing them and teaching them all that they had received from Him (Matt 28:18-20).
It is striking that Jesus sent the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, a festival when thousands of pilgrims would be in Jerusalem. The disciples would be able to proclaim the gospel to pilgrims who would, in turn, take the gospel message home to their respective corners of the Jewish diaspora. Moreover, Gentile converts to Judaism were among the pilgrims, especially from Rome (Acts 2:11). So on that day, the gospel went to those who were outside ethnic Israel.
Thus, from the very beginning of the church, the disciples proclaimed the gospel to a diverse group of Jewish and Gentile pilgrims who, in turn, would assist in spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ beyond Jerusalem and Judea to the remotest corners of the earth.
3. The church proclaimed the gospel in the languages of the nations.
Among the miraculous events of Pentecost, the most misunderstood is the disciples’ speaking in the languages of the nations. In Acts 2:4, the disciples spoke in “other languages,” human languages that they didn’t know. The Holy Spirit enabled them to do this, underscoring the miraculous nature of their speaking.
Furthermore, the pilgrims heard the disciples speaking their own languages (Acts 2:6). A pilgrim’s eyewitness testimony is given in which he recounts twice that the disciples spoke in languages associated with various parts of the world, but not Galilee (Acts 2:7-11).
Bringing even more specificity to his account of the events, the eyewitness mentions the various regions that the pilgrims traveled from. Based on the list, it’s possible that fifteen distinct languages may have been spoken by the disciples.
Regardless of the number, the various groups of pilgrims were all hearing the mighty deeds of God proclaimed in their languages.
What were these “mighty deeds of God”? There were probably two key topics: the promised Spirit and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
In fact, these are the two central topics of Peter’s sermon. He defended everything that was happening as the work of the Spirit and as evidence that Christ was resurrected from the dead. Then Peter made his main point: because of the work of the Spirit and the resurrection of Christ, the crowds needed to repent, for they had nailed Christ to the cross and were utterly guilty.
Fascinatingly, this sermon–one of the greatest sermons of all time–was most likely delivered in Greek. Why would Peter have preached in Greek? It was, at the time, the language of the Jewish diaspora and much of the world as they knew it.
Ultimately, the Holy Spirit worked through Peter and the disciples in such a way that all those who were assembled heard the gospel in their own languages.
It was good news for the nations, a message that the pilgrims were to hear and take back home with them to their own communities.
Conclusion
On Pentecost, the church was born, a work of the Holy Spirit, accomplished through the disciples as they proclaimed the gospel to the crowds in their own languages.
The gospel was proclaimed in the language of the nations so that they might understand and put their faith in Christ, as they did, with three thousand baptized as a result.
The implications of the events of that day reverberate to the present, and the last echoes will still be heard around the throne of God in the eternal praise of the nations.
In the second post in this two-part series, we’ll continue with the implications of Pentecost for us today.