Acts 2:1-13

All right, well. Good morning, good morning, good morning. Welcome to Coffee and Devotions. This is where every day we get together, we get into God's Word, and we grow in our love for the Lord together. And this year, 2022, we'll make it from Acts to Philemon. I'm so excited. We're at Acts chapter 2, verses 1 through 13. Let's go ahead and have, I got a little bit of tea here. It's cold outside. This morning I went out, I was doing chores, and it was negative seven degrees. I was so glad my wife bought me a new hat and some gloves.
Let's go ahead and have some tea, warm up, and we'll get into God's Word together. Let's go ahead and pray. Father, we thank you so much for the blessing it is to get to come to your word. We pray that as we read your word now, that you would care for us, instruct our hearts, Lord, in Jesus's name. Amen. All right, here we go.
Acts chapter two, the first 13 verses. When the day of Pentecost had finally come, by the way, this is Pentecost is 50 days after the Passover. And so, you know, it's this long period of time where there's this another festival that would happen. So everybody's gathered together in Jerusalem and they're ready to have their second feast.
They were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Then there appeared to them divided tongues as of fire, and one sat upon each of them, and they were filled. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with each other in tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. And they were dwelling in Jerusalem. Interestingly, here, notice this is where it gets really... Well, we're just going to talk about it at the end. And there were dwelling in Jerusalem, Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven.
And when this sound occurred, the multitude came together and were confused because everyone heard them speak in his own language. But then they were all amazed and marveled, saying to one another, Look, are not these all men who speak Galileans? And how is it that we hear them in our own language in which we were born? Parthians and Medes and Elamites, those dwelling in Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and all the parts of Libya adjoining Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs, we hear them speaking in our own tongues with wonderful works of God.
So they were all amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, whatever could this mean? Others, mocking said, they're full of new wine. We need to ask ourselves, A, what is this about? B, what's the best verse to summarize this? And C, what are we called to do in response to these words? So first, A, what is this about?
Well, Jesus had promised them he was going to heaven. He was ascending onto his throne, but he wouldn't leave them as orphans. He was going to send them his Holy Spirit. And here, the Holy Spirit comes upon them in a marvelous and miraculous way. He comes to them like tongues of fire. And as that new church is gathered together, as this new covenant church is there at the Pentecost feast, and they're all in one house, this happens to them, and what is this gift that they get?
As they speak to one another, as they communicate to one another, there's a whole bunch of misunderstanding. We need to let the text speak for itself. This is one of the things we can read, especially verse 3. Then there appeared to them divided tongues as a fire, and one sat on each of them. And a lot of people have read into a lot of that and have come up with fanciful ideas of what that means instead of just letting a historical narrative explain it for us. And that's exactly what Luke does. In reality, there shouldn't be a pause between verse 4 and verse 5 because the tongues come down and they speak. And what do they start speaking? Well, they start speaking to one another.
And what's the miraculous part? They all understand what the apostles here are saying. Isn't this interesting? So people all over the world, people who are Arabs and people who are in Rome, people who are in Asia and people who are in Egypt, all of them are able to understand. The gift of tongues is not speaking some angelic language that nobody understands, But what is the first manifestation here? Is that they're speaking a language that everyone can understand. And as we're going to pick up in Peter's sermon as we go in the next couple days, verses 14 and following, Peter preaches to them in a language that they can all understand. It's like we're going back before Babylon. It's like they're going back to the mother tongues and the people are amazed by this, absolutely shocked.
How is it possible? Aren't these people from Galilee? Aren't they from this backward country up north? It's not even an area that's really civilized. We're talking about fishermen. They're not educated people. And somehow they're speaking languages that they shouldn't know how to speak.
And they're speaking one language and everybody is able to hear it and understand it. And it's their own mother tongue. That's what they're hearing. This is the miraculous thing. It's not gibberish. It's not lalalalala, you know. but they understand it in their own mother tongue. It's remarkable. It absolutely is a gift of the Holy Spirit, something that only God could do, and it's not confusion. No one is confused by this. As we're going to read in the next section, everyone understands what Peter is saying.
But notice, this is something that we need to take note of. In verse 12, notice that the people, they were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, whatever could this mean? So there's a group of people who are amazed. But in this assembly, there's another group of people and they're not amazed. Indeed, what do they say in verse 13? Others mocking said, they are full of new wine. Well, we're going to get to that in a second, but we need to ask ourselves what's the best verse for this chapter or for this section. Well, in my Bible, I have verses six and eight. And I have 6, 8, 11, and 13. That's what I have underlined in my Bible. What would you underline in your Bible? Feel free to let me know in the comments if you're on Facebook or YouTube.
But what I really want to bring out with calling today is one, we need to know what the gift of tongues are, and I think the text here makes it clear what this gift is. Okay, so number one, I think that's what we're called to do is be sober and honest with what the scriptures actually say, and we're going to get to tongues again as we keep moving through, especially the Pauline corpus. We're going to see more instances of this, and Paul is going to talk about it himself. But two, and this is This is where it comes into calling in our own lives today is verse 13.
Others mocking said they are full of new wine. These are people who have joined with the apostles. But they're they're not convinced they're there with them at Pentecost, but they're not convinced that this is the work of the Holy Spirit. Their minds are dark and their hearts are hard. They're critics and they're cynics. And we need to recognize that that is true even today.
It's one of the things that drives me absolutely nuts when people will say, oh, well, if I was in the first century, or if I was there around Jesus' time, then I would believe. No, you wouldn't. Because the Jews saw Jesus do miracles and they still wanted to kill him. Oh, if I had only seen, you know, if I was there and I and I saw the Holy Spirit come down with no, no, you still wouldn't believe. Because these people. were there and they saw and they still mocked. Others just drunk on new wine. See, because faith isn't by sight.
And that's the reality we have to get to. And so when we work through God's word like this, we see the critics are always going to be critical. The cynics are always going to be cynical because the problem is it's an issue of the heart. And so the question is, do you believe? Do you trust God's word that this is a true narrative, that these things really did happen?
Because there were tons of people there who saw it. This is a historical fact that this happened. And so I don't need to be there to believe it. I can believe that the scriptures, what the scriptures are telling me is true, that this truly did happen. I don't need to see that miracle happen every single generation, but I can trust the historical narrative that there was this moment where the Holy Spirit came down in this amazing, powerful way. And God used that first century church and gave them this incredible gift that his word would go out to the ends of the earth, that God was going to fulfill the commission that he had started. And so I think that this happened. I really do believe. The question is, do you? Do you trust God's word? Oh, let's go ahead and pray.
Father, we thank you so much that Jesus's promises are true and that you have given us your Holy Spirit. Lord, we thank you so much that you showed the pouring out of your Holy Spirit in this absolutely remarkable way. And we thank you that each person who believes and trusts in the name of Jesus Christ. Father, we thank you that we have your Spirit. God, we pray that we would follow after you. Believe your word. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, may the Lord grant you peace and joy and also faith as you walk today. I'll see you tomorrow. Bye.