Tuesday, June 6, 2006
Acts 2:4 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.
THE MIRACLE OF PENTECOST
Certainly this was not gibberish. The tongues the disciples spoke on Pentecost were known languages that were spoken in that very region as well as in other places. Those who were there understood their words.
Luke carefully describes the onlookers to this amazing miracle of tongues. They had come rushing together to investigate a sound like a great wind blowing. When they arrived they found no sign of any kind of windstorm. Instead, "each one heard them speaking in his own language."
They heard the strange sound of certain people, evidently peasants from Galilee, who were speaking in over sixteen different languages. This was long before the days of the art of linguistics. A person had to live in a country in order to learn its language. But it was quite evident that these people were not educated. Yet these untrained men and women were speaking in languages foreign to them. This speaking in tongues was a miracle -- a miracle that pictured a greater one.
Because of sin God had used language to separate the nations, beginning at Babel. Now God's answer to the separation sin brings cuts across all language -- and that Gospel message works a miracle far greater than speaking a language one never studied.
Here is the Spirit at work changing human minds and hearts and lives through the proclamation of Christ crucified and risen. 3,000 were brought to faith in Christ that day by the power of the Gospel. That was the great miracle of Pentecost. And that is the continuing miracle of Pentecost. Every day the Spirit works faith in Jesus Christ in human hearts.
The miracle of tongues was for the day -- not to be repeated any more than Bethlehem's star. But these disciples and those who followed them would continue to proclaim the Word of reconciliation, the good news that Jesus HAS completed His work of redeeming the world. Here is a powerful sign the Spirit would equip and bless Jesus' people in their work.
And so He does. Still the Spirit equips those whom Jesus sends. Still the Spirit comes with power to Christ's disciples -- to us.
