“WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?”
By: Frank Tunstall, D. Min.
The Holy Spirit is multilingual.
Jesus spoke fluently each of the languages present that great Pentecost morning. The Spirit today also speaks perfectly every language on earth, some 6,500.
The Holy Spirit demonstrated His ability in an amazing show of power, not only to speak the languages but to enable the Galileans to speak with the correct inflections languages they had never learned. It is easy to perceive why the numbers of the curious swelled in the Upper Room.
What were they saying?
Luke recorded the people heard them “declaring the wonders of God in [their] own tongues!” (Acts 2:11).
The onlookers were amazed. It is understandable they wanted more information.
“What does this mean?”
A new paradigm of worship was born that Pentecost morning. Only divine genus could do it. It birthed the church that ultimately bypassed the Jewish worship system some 1800 years old that went back to Abraham. It also introduced a whole new practice of adoration and veneration that focused solely on Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God (John 1:29-36). Christ-centered worship built around the illustration of the vine and the branches continues to be the plan of God to this day.
Jesus could not be everywhere at the same time. Simply put, He would not be able physically to serve the needs of His followers and give each one His undivided attention. Further, expecting His followers to come to Jerusalem for the special feast days, from wherever they were worldwide, was unrealistic too.
Jesus did reach out to the temple, but it seemed every visit He made in His ministry ended in conflict. More than a thousand years of tradition certainly helped make the transition to the new order difficult.
The solution of the Heavenly Father was not to try to assimilate the new paradigm into the first Covenant. The Holy Spirit simply would not be able to build the Lord’s Church around the Jerusalem Temple and its sacrificial system of worship. And, in any case the religious leadership would never make Jesus Lord of the temple, the sole and final sacrifice for sin, and in His own person the center of worship.
Instead of trying to blend with the temple, Jesus bypassed it.
One of the scariest things I can think of is that the Pentecostal revival can be lost to the point Jesus bypasses us as well.
Jesus’ own body is the temple Jesus voluntarily sacrificed. In His own Person, Jesus is the essence of the temple of God. “Destroy this temple and I will raise it again in three days,” was a prophecy that referred to Jesus as the final sacrifice for sin, not to the destruction of the temple (John 2:19-22; Hebrews 10:18; 1 John 2:2). His blood that dripped to the ground to the last drop meant God had sacrificed Himself in our place, as our substitute. Jesus did it at no price and demanded no payment (Isaiah 52:3; 55:1).
In the paradigm of the New Covenant, the centerpiece is a new kind of temple. “I will put my law in their inward parts,” God said to Jeremiah, “and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jeremiah 31:33, KJV; Luke 17:21). In the new worship plan, “where [only] two or three are gathered together,” Jesus said, “there am I in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20). Divine genius!
A huge crowd had gathered in Jerusalem that Pentecost morning. They represented a wide swath of the Roman Empire, including visitors from as far away as Rome, Crete and Arabia.
Peter’s explanation (Acts 2:14-21).
“This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel; ‘And it shall come to pass in the last days,” saith God,” I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy….And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved’” (Acts 2:14-21, KJV).
