God Showed Up! Acts 2:1-4.
Moses spent 40 years in Egypt as the adopted son of Pharoah’s daughter, then he spent 40 years in the desert of Midian as a shepherd. He was 80 years old, no spring chicken by any standard. Then God showed up!
Moses was tending sheep close to the Mountain called Horeb, which is referred to as the Mountain of God. The angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire in a bush.
Moses saw the burning bush and thought he should go closer and check it out. The Lord saw Moses going toward the bush and called out to him, “Moses, Moses.”
Moses responded by saying, “here I am.” God responded to Moses by telling him to take off his sandals because he was standing on holy ground.
God explained to Moses the was the God of his fathers and He had seen the misery of the people of God, Israel in Egypt and God was calling Moses to go back and lead them out of bondage.
Moses didn’t really warm up to the idea and it took some communication from God to pull his faith over the line!
What was going on? God showed up, and when God shows up, He does a new thing! His new thing for Moses would radically change the rest of his life!
When God shows up, He does a new thing! We will see Him show up to do a new thing in Acts 2:1-4, on the day of Pentecost in AD 33!
Acts 2:1, “When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place.” (NIV)
First, it was the day of Pentecost!
Pentecost came along 50 days after the death of Christ on the cross. Originally, the day of Pentecost was the festival of first fruits, but by the time of Christ, the Jews saw it as a celebration of God giving the law to Moses on Mt. Sinai. They saw Pentecost as a celebration and commemoration of God giving the law and establishing the Old Covenant.
Something different and new was about to happen in AD 33 on the day of Pentecost.
God showed up and did a new thing! He came with the power of the Holy Spirit and came into His people and put a New Covenant in place that fulfilled and went beyond the Old Covenant that was put in place on Mount Sinai.
This New Covenant was one of Grace, that being a favor from God no one deserved. What was that favor? God had our sin paid for by His Son paying our death penalty on the cross.
Now when we trust Him and are born again, He forgives our sin and comes to live in us to change us from the inside out by the power of the Holy Spirit.
God shows up and does a new thing!
Acts 2:2, “Suddenly the sound like the blowing of a violent wind came and filled the whole house where they were sitting.” (NIV)
SECOND, WIND IS A SYMBOL OF GOD’S PRESENCE
In the Old Testament, written in Hebrew
the word for wind, RUA is the same word for Spirit. The context defines how the word is being used. In the New Testament the word for wind is PNEUMA and is the same word that’s often translated by the word Spirit. Again, the context defines how the word is being used.
The followers of Jesus are all together in one place and the sound like a violent wind came from Heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.
To Jewish folks, which is who the people involved were, wind says the Spirit is operating. It’s a physical statement that God showed up!
The Hebrew is translated by the word BREATH in Ezekiel 37:9 in the Valley of Dry Bones history. It’s the same word, RUA for wind or Spirit in Hebrew and is significant to any Jewish person.
Ezekiel 37:9, “Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘this is what the Sovereign Lord says: come from the four winds, o breath, and breathe into these slain, that they may live.” (NIV)
To any Jewish person present on Pentecost, the breath of Ezekiel would be the same as the Spirit and wind showing up on Pentecost and bringing life to the People by the Holy Spirit.
Jesus defined the impact of this in John 3:8, “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So, it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” (NIV)
What’s happening on the day of Pentecost? God is showing up and demonstrating people are going to be born of the Spirit. God’s presence shows up in the wind, or Spirit and is saying God showed up and is getting ready to do a new and powerful thing.
Acts 2:3, “They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them.” (NIV)
THIRD, FIRE IS A SYMBOL OF GOD’S PRESENCE
Why tongues of fire appearing on people?
How did God appear to Moses in the bush? In the fire of the burning bush!
Do you remember how God guided the people of Israel in the desert by night? Exodus 13:21, “By day the Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they could travel by day or night.” (NIV)
God’s presence showed up in fire to guide the Jewish people in the desert by night. The fire was God’s presence sent to guide the folks at night.
All the people at Pentecost where good Jewish people and this fire would have made it clear to them God was showing up.
Often in the Old Testament the fire was to give the people corporate leadership as a group but notice how Peter frames it in his language in Acts 2:2, “The tongues of fire separated and came to rest on EACH ONE OF THEM.”
What’s the point? Under this new covenant of grace God shows up to people personally and it’s all about a personal relationship with God, but those so touched personally by a new birth into a personal relationship with
Christ, gather together as God’s chosen and holy people corporately known as the church.
God shows up personally in people’s lives to do a new work in them by the power of the Holy Spirit through a new birth into Christ.
Acts 1:4, “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.”
FOURTH, THE SPIRIT EMPOWERS TONGUES OR LANGUAGES
The subject of “tongues” is grossly misunderstood in the Christian community of our day! Tongue was used in Greek the same way we might use tongue today in a phrase like, “he spoke the Spanish tongue.” The word tongue was used interchangeably with the word language.
In the first 13 verses of Acts 2 the words “tongue” and “language” each appear 2 times and are used interchangeably. In Acts 2:7-11 16 languages are defined that people heard the folks that were Galilean speaking in.
What’s going on? It has to do with prophesy or speaking forth God’s word. Prophesy can have to do with predicting the future or not predicting the future, but it’s always speaking forth God’s Word.
From the book of Malachi on prophesy stopped. Malachi was written 400 years before Christ came and during those years there was no prophesy.
In Acts 2:17-21 Peter quotes the Prophet Joel making it clear in verse 18 people will prophesy again, and people hearing languages or tongues that they understood in their native language made it clear to them that prophesy was kicking in again.
Why is prophecy coming back? Because God is showing up to do a new thing based on a New Covenant ratified in the blood of Jesus. God is showing up and communicating a gospel of grace and is doing his new thing.
God showed up and did a new thing with Moses. God showed on Pentecost and did a new thing with the Gospel of grace. He showed up in my life in January of 1972 when I finally surrendered to Jesus and He powered me up with the Holy Spirit.
I recently did a funeral service for an 85-year-old man. His daughter told me how he communicated with her when he was ill and could not speak. He wrote on a whiteboard. What did he write on the whiteboard? He wrote, “I love Jesus.”
At the funeral I told that story and then told them when he got to heaven Jesus had a whiteboard that said, “I loved you first, welcome home.”
God did that new thing in that man’s life, like He showed up and did a new thing on Pentecost in AD 33. God’s new thing worked then and it works now 1,991 years later.
Come to Christ in faith and God will show up and do a new thing in your life today like He did on Pentecost!
Tom West works in advanced plans with Myers Funeral Service and can be reached for funeral and cremation insurance and help with funerals and preaching. You can reach him on his cell number at 602.758.1168. You can see Tom’s messages daily on his Youtube channel at Christian Ministry Central.