“Telling in our Own Tongues the Mighty Works of God”
Acts 2:1-21
5/11/08
Today is Pentecost Sunday, the day when we celebrate
the sending of the Holy Spirit, in order to glorify Christ by
delivering Jesus and His gifts to us through the proclamation of His
Word and the administration of His Sacraments. We see the
beginning of this ministry in today’s reading from the book of
Acts. Here the Spirit comes to the disciples of Jesus amidst a
sound like a mighty rushing wind and the appearance of tongues of fire,
which rest on each one of them, and He enables them to speak in various
languages about the mighty works of God. Then the Apostle Peter
preaches a sermon and tells us that all of this is just what was spoken
of through the prophet Joel, and that it occurred in order that all who
call upon the Name of the Lord might be saved.
Signs, wonders, and the gift of tongues are given by
the Holy Spirit to lead people to Christ, so that they might call upon
His Name and be saved. Today, however, more people are interested
in the signs, wonders, and the gift of tongues for their own sake,
rather than for the purpose for which they are given. In other
words, instead of focusing on the reason why the Holy Spirit grants
this gift of tongues to the disciples and on what He says through them,
many Christians today strive to attain this gift, in order to assure
themselves that they have the Holy Spirit and that they are
“spirit-filled” Christians. They also see it as a way
in which God communicates with them today.
Wishing to hear God speak is a big desire on the
part of many Christians. In the writing of this sermon I googled
“listening to God” just to see what things people turn to
to try to hear God speaking to them. Here’s just a few of
the sources that I was directed to: Nature, my heart, my mind, my
feelings, other people, dreams and visions, and yes, sometimes even the
Bible. But here’s the problem with non-biblical sources for
trying to hear God speak: First, some of them don’t give
you the full revelation of God in Jesus Christ. Nature, for
example, will give you some information about God. The Apostle
Paul writes that nature will at least tell you that God exists; it will
tell you of His power and majesty. But it won’t give you
any information about Jesus and what He’s done for you on the
cross. It won’t tell you that God has reconciled you to
Himself and forgives you your sins for Christ’s sake.
Second, sources like your heart, your mind, and your feelings are all
infected with sin. Jesus says our hearts are full of evil
thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, and
slander. Paul tells us our minds must continually be
renewed. Dreams and visions can either have their source in our
fallen minds or in the deceptions of the devil. Our feelings,
too, can never be a test for truth; they are also infected with our sin
and can easily lead us astray. And since other people are sinners
as well, they can never fully be trusted to speak God’s words in
their truth and purity, unless their words are in line with the words
of the Bible.
It’s the Bible alone that can be trusted to
speak the truth about God to us, because it alone is His Word.
The Bible alone is the only source where we know we are hearing God
speak to us. Its words do not come from our own hearts or
minds. They do not come from us but to us. They are not a
product of man, but are breathed by the Holy Spirit. Peter
writes, “No prophecy [of Scripture] was ever produced by the will
of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy
Spirit.” How do we know this is true? How can we
trust that the New Testament documents, for example, are God’s
Word and that they tell us the truth about Jesus? Because of the
promise of Jesus made to His disciples: “The Helper, the
Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my Name, will teach you all
things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to
you.” With such words Jesus assures us that the eye-witness
testimony which His disciples give of Him in their writings are the
words of the Holy Spirit. We can therefore believe these words,
not only because they have Jesus’ promise attached to them, not
only because they are the words of faithful eye-witnesses of Jesus
which can be checked out, but also because these eye-witnesses sealed
their testimony with their own blood. We can be certain, then,
that the Bible is the Word of God. When the Scriptures are being
proclaimed, taught, read, or meditated upon, there God is speaking to
us.
But in today’s text from the book of Acts, the
Holy Spirit seems to make an exception, where, in addition to speaking
through the writings of the prophet Joel, He puts His words directly
into the mouths of these disciples. Instead of reading the
Scriptures, they simply speak the words of the Spirit in various
languages as He gives them utterance. What does this mean?
First, it does not mean that the Holy Spirit will grant this gift to
everyone. Nowhere in the Scriptures will you find such a promise;
nowhere do the Scriptures say that every Christian must be able to
speak in tongues and that it is a sure sign that they have the Holy
Spirit. You have the Holy Spirit by virtue of your Baptism.
And although some Christians were granted this gift at certain times
and in certain places it does not mean that the Holy Spirit would
continue to grant this gift to future Christians. So, why did He
do it here? For at least three reasons: The first reason is
that there was no New Testament written yet; the Apostles had not yet
written down their testimony about Jesus, so they couldn’t use
those writings to proclaim Christ. Secondly, there were people
from all different parts of the world gathered in Jerusalem at that
time for the Feast of Pentecost; they didn’t all speak Hebrew,
Greek, or Latin, and the Holy Spirit wanted them to hear His words in
their own language. And third, the gift of tongues given to both
Jews and Gentiles shows that the Holy Spirit is given to all believers
in Christ, regardless of whether they are Jews or Gentiles.
Jewish Christians are no better than non-Jewish Christians, they both
share in the same inheritance, they’re all one through faith in
Jesus Christ. And so the Holy Spirit bore witness to this not
only by giving these disciples the gift of tongues, but also by giving
it to the first Samaritan believers, as well as to the Roman Centurion,
Cornelius and his family, when they were brought to faith in Jesus.
But the most significant thing about this sign is
not the mere miraculous ability to speak in an unknown language;
it’s what is being said in that language. The visitors to
Jerusalem were, of course, astonished to hear the disciples speaking in
their own native tongues, but it was what the disciples were saying
that was more amazing. They were speaking of the “mighty
works of God.” Now, what were these mighty works of God
they were talking about? They could have been God’s work in
nature. The disciples could have been speaking about God as the
maker of heaven and earth. They could have been talking about
beautiful sunsets, magnificent mountain ranges, or awe-inspiring
canyons. But though these are all mighty works of God, they are
not the works that the disciples were talking about as the Spirit gave
them utterance on that day of Pentecost. How do we know? At
the beginning of the book of Acts, just before His ascension, Jesus
told His disciples, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit
has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all
Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” This is in
line with what He told them on the night when He was betrayed. He
said, “When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the
Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, He will bear
witness about me. And you also will bear witness, because you
have been with me from the beginning.” The mighty works of
God that the disciples were talking about, then, were the mighty works
He accomplished through His Son, Jesus Christ, specifically His mighty
work of salvation, which He achieved for us through our Lord’s
life, death, and resurrection. The disciples would have been
proclaiming Christ’s words and work, His suffering and death on
the cross, His bodily resurrection from the dead, and His ascension to
the right hand of God the Father Almighty. They would have been
proclaiming God’s mighty work of reconciling the world to Himself
through the blood of His Son, forgiving sins and granting eternal life
to all who trust in Him. This is what the disciples were speaking
of, it’s what Jesus said they’d be witnesses of, it’s
what He said the work of the Holy Spirit would be.
This, then, is how you know when you are hearing the
Holy Spirit speak today. Whether it’s some sort of
revelation that someone claims to have had, whether it’s the
ability to speak in some strange tongue that they supposedly have been
given, whether it’s a vision, dream, or feeling that they say
they’ve experienced, you can test all these things to see if
they’re from the Holy Spirit or not by asking yourself questions,
like, “Does what I’m hearing speak of Christ? Am I
hearing about the mighty works of God which He accomplished in Jesus,
crucified and risen from the dead for my salvation? Is what
I’m hearing in line with what the Bible teaches, or is it new or
contradictory information?” The only way you’re going
to know the answers to these questions is if you know the Bible, the
Word of God, yourself. If you don’t know what the Holy
Spirit has already said in the Scriptures, how will you be able to
distinguish between His words and the words of another spirit?
The Holy Spirit was sent by the Father and the Son
to speak of Christ and the mighty works of God in Him. Any
so-called Holy Spirit that does not do this is not the Holy
Spirit. The Holy Spirit does what Jesus said He would do:
“He will glorify me,” says Jesus, “for He will take
what is mine and declare it to you.” The Holy Spirit speaks
of Christ and His work, because “faith comes by hearing, and
hearing by the word about Christ.” The only way you come to
believe in Jesus is if the Word about Him is proclaimed. This is
why Jesus established the Office of the Holy Ministry, the Office where
the Holy Spirit is at work today delivering your Savior and His gifts
to you through God’s Word, through Baptism, through the
Lord’s Supper, and through Holy Absolution. All of these
means have God’s promise attached to them that through them He is
doing His mighty work of granting you the forgiveness of sins, life,
and salvation which Jesus won for you on the cross.
Peter reminds us that the Day of the Lord is
coming. Joel calls it the “great and magnificent
day.” It’s the day when Christ will come to judge the
living and the dead, the day when unbelievers will judged wicked and
thrown into the lake of fire, while believers in Christ will be judged
righteous and ushered into glory. Because God wants all to call
on the Name of the Lord and be saved, He has sent His Holy Spirit to
point the world to Jesus. He used the Apostles to proclaim and
write down their eye-witness testimony of Him. He uses pastors
today to publicly proclaim that Word about Him. And He uses you
in your own vocations to speak that Word about Jesus to the people
around you. With His Word the Holy Spirit continues to lead you
to repentance, that you might confess your sins and trust in your
Savior for the forgiveness of your sins. He continues to work
through your Baptism, causing you to die daily with Christ to your
sinful lusts and to rise with Christ to newness of life. He
continues to absolve you of your sins, cleansing you of all
unrighteousness with the blood of Christ. And He continues to
feed you on the body and blood of Christ, in order to nourish and
strengthen your faith in Him, until He comes again to raise you from
the dead and take you to be with Himself in His Father’s house
forever.
You and I are the foreigners to whom it has been
granted to hear of the mighty works of God in Christ in our own
language, that we might call on the Name of the Lord and be
saved. This is the ministry of God’s Holy Spirit, the gift
for which we give God thanks and praise on this day of Pentecost.
Amen.