Jesus' followers just experienced ten days like no others. The Lord was back in heaven, catching a cloud back home from the Mount of Olives (Acts 1:9).
Yet the Holy Spirit had yet to make His grand entrance. Jesus was gone. The Spirit had yet to arrive. Curious days indeed.
Luke tells us "the day of Pentecost arrived" (v1). This is the feast commanded by God just 50 days after Passover (Lev 23:9-22).
This celebration focused on God's provision of the first fruits of the harvest. Don't miss the fact that these followers of Jesus crammed into an upstairs banquet room were His first fruits.
"They were all together in one place." Jesus had told them not to leave Jerusalem and wait on the coming of God's Spirit (Acts 1:4-5; Lk 24:49).
There is little doubt that this "one place" was the legendary upper room. This most likely was the same room where Jesus celebrated the Passover seder with His disciples.
The very same room they gathered after His death. The very same room the risen Jesus miraculously appeared to them. The very same room where they called the roll (Acts 1:13-14). The very same room where they threw dice to name Matthias as Judas' replacement.
It's at this point that everything changes. Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce to you the Third Person of the Trinity: THE HOLY SPIRIT!!!
Luke's Gospel drips with repeated mention of God's Spirit. A huge point made in his prequel is that Jesus is THE Spirit-filled Man.
The Spirit of God plays an incredibly important role in the book of Luke, but He is selective. Appearing and moving here and there (Jn 3:8).
While Jesus is front and center in the Gospels, His Holy Spirit takes the stage in Acts. This books is called formally The Acts of the Apostles. More accurately, we could call it The Acts of the Holy Spirit.
And it's interesting that Luke's first book describes the incarnation of Jesus (His birth) in chapter 2. And in his second book, the Spirit shows up in a big way in chapter 2.
(Okay, I get it. Dr. Luke didn't divide his books into the chapters we have today. I just find it curious. Work with me here, people.)
"Suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind" (v2). It began in a moment. In the blink of an eye.
We don't know what they were doing, but they were all there. Somehow they know this is "from heaven." Maybe the roar came from above.
Eyewitnesses tell Dr. Luke that it sounded "like a mighty rushing wind." The ESV doesn't really do the original Greek text justice in this description. The adjective biaios means violent, vehement or with tremendous force. And this is only time this word appears in the Bible.
I've had the opportunity to experience the thunderous roar of winds in the eye wall of a hurricane on a couple of occasions. It is frightening. Think of the blast from a jet engine.
Throughout Scripture, God's Spirit is often compared to wind. But this was not like a gentle summer breeze.
The roar of this violent wind is only described as a sound. The author never writes of things blowing around. Just the roar of this heavenly hurricane filling the entire home. God's promised Spirit was making quite an entrance.
If things weren't wild enough already, "divided tongues of fire appeared to them and rested on each of them" (v3). Like the sound of the violent wind, these appear to be fire.
Chances are these flames weren't actually fire, but supernatural indicators of God's presence among them. And like the association of wind with God's Spirit, fire is often part of the special effects package of the manifest presence of God in the OT.
These tongues of fire split apart and then rested on every head in the room. The Greek verb here is kathizo, which actually means to sit down upon something.
The Spirit's flame did not discriminate. He took a seat on each and every person in the room. He didn't just rest on the apostles. Not just the men. Everyone.
This is a huge reminder that the Holy Spirit baptizes ALL believers. Men. Women. Young. Old. All races. Everyone. God's Spirit does not discriminate.
"And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit" (v4). Fill'er up!! Jesus had promised this would happen "not many days from now" (Acts 1:5) and He was right on target.
Just ten short days from when He spoke those words, His Spirit roared from heaven into the room.
Let's be clear on the roles of the Three Persons of the Trinity in what's happening here. Jesus has asked the Father to send the Spirit (Jn 14:16). Jesus is the One who is actually baptizing them in the Spirit (Lk 3:16).
The Spirit will not only remind them of everything Jesus did and said (Jn 14:26), but empower them for their worldwide Gospel mission (Acts 1:8; Jn 15:26).
They were not only baptized with the Holy Spirit but filled. They are similar but distinctly different. The Spirit baptizes only once when God saves us.
The Spirit can fill us on more than one occasion. We see that vividly just in the book of Acts (Acts 4:8, 31; 6:5; 7:55; 13:9; 13:52). Paul even instructs us not to get filled with booze, but filled with the Spirit (Eph 5:18).
As if things weren't weird enough already, these followers of Jesus "began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance."
(We won't go into a long and drawn out discussion of the sign gifts at this point. My personal view is that such gifts of the Spirit are still active today. I simply can't do the Scriptural gymnastics necessary to take a view of cessation.)
What we do know is that it did happen to these 120 Spirit-baptized believers at Pentecost. We know that this ability to speak in other languages was a gift through the power of the Spirit. It was a huge part of taking the Gospel of grace to the entire planet.
God's long-awaited Messiah had baptized His followers in God's long-promised Spirit. Things would never be the same.
We should all say to God’s Spirit, "Fill'er up!"
©2011
Jay Jennings
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