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In Christ, Mark
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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken.
Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!”
Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”
Acts 2:1-12
This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.
“I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me comes One who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” Matthew 3:11
“…you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Acts 1:8
John and Jesus. They were together when Jesus got His ministry started.
Of course, we know John was born first to Zechariah and Elizabeth, the God-chosen messenger to proclaim His Son’s coming. This came to be as John was baptizing repentant God-believers in the Jordan River. One day, Jesus came on the scene which led John to proclaim:
“Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” John 1:29
Then this Lamb of God, Jesus, wades into the water with John to be baptized Himself before this happened:
As soon as Jesus was baptized, He went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on Him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is My Son, whom I love; with Him I am well pleased.” Matthew 3:16-17
“Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness.” Luke 4:1
Jesus was 30 years old when He was baptized and although He had lived a sinless life up to that point, there had been nothing necessarily spectacular about Him. He had performed no miracles nor had He done any significant public teaching. None of this happened until He was full of the Holy Spirit and that occurred after He went up out of the waters of the Jordan and had the Spirit of God alight upon Him.
From that point on, it was go-time for Jesus’ full time public ministry work.
But before we head away from John, we see that He not only told of the Jesus as the Savior of the world but the One who would baptize, not just with mere water, but rather the fire of the Holy Spirit. This was just one more special power reserved for Jesus by His Father God.
Fast forward to Jesus at the very end of His ministry and we see where John’s prophecy comes to life. For just before Jesus ascended to sit at His Father’s right hand in authority over all things in heaven and on earth, He commands His disciples to go into Jerusalem and wait to do anything in His name until they received the promised gift of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit that would come by way of a fiery baptism.
And so it was. The disciples went into Jerusalem and didn’t do anything in regard to evangelism. They only allowed God to lead them to the replacement for Judas, adding Matthias to the mix after asking for the Lord to help them choose and then casting lots.
Well, as the second chapter of Acts opens, we find the disciples together in one place on the day of Pentecost. The word was Greek and represented the Old Testament Festival of Weeks, a celebration held fifty days after the Passover. Typically, the Feast of Weeks marked the end of the wheat harvest but as we see in the opening verses of our passage, on this Pentecost after Jesus’ ascension, it was more of a new beginning than a ritualistic end.
This is because the disciples gathered suddenly encountered a “sound like the blowing of a violent wind” which rushed down from heaven and “filled the whole house where they were sitting.” This would probably been amazing enough on its own but then we read where the disciples “saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them.” And with that, all of them were “filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.”
Indeed, the promised gift of the Holy Spirit had come and brought baptism by fire, just as had been predicted. The disciples were now just as ready to get into their active public ministry work as Jesus was when He departed the Jordan and that work would start in Jerusalem, just as Jesus had commanded.
The people witnessing the first fruits of the Holy Spirit baptism, the full understanding of people who came from different nations and spoke different languages, were left “amazed and perplexed” wondering what it all meant.
Soon they would find out as the disciples got to work carrying on the ministry of Jesus. We’ll be looking at that the rest of the way through Acts as we look at the start up of the Christian church. I hope you’ll join me daily for that journey.
Amen.
In Christ,
Mark
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