THE BIRTH OF THE CHURCH

I once pastored a church that had two birthdays. The first was in the early 1900's, but around 1930 it went dormant for a few years. Then, a group got together and re-created the old church. It was born again!

When did what we think of as the first Church start? One possibility is at the point of Peter's great confession: You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God! But an equally good argument could be made for the Day of Pentecost when the church suddenly expanded from 120 to 3000 in an hour or two! Sunday's lesson is about that experience as recorded in Acts 2:1-15.

Pentecost also called Shavuot or the Feast of Weeks follows several weeks after Passover. The latter represents the Exodus from Egypt, while Shavuot serves to remember the giving of the Torah, or Ten Commandments to Israel. The Jews looked back on this as the birth of their nation. Thus the coming of the Holy Spirit and the conversion of 3000 on Pentecost is fittingly seen as the birth of the Church.

They were all together in one place. They refers to the 11 apostles plus other followers of Christ, probably totaling around 120. Much has been made of the fact they were all together – unity and all that. And this was indeed a core, which was going to explode into a dynamic organism before the sun went down.

I write this on a day of record-setting storms including strong winds. Notice Luke did not say the wind blew, he said a sound LIKE the wind came, and not just any wind, but the “blowing of a violent wind,” perhaps like a tornado. The sound filled the house. I enjoy classical organ music, so I'm in heaven when a skilled organist opens up the instrument to fill the auditorium with sound. Imagine such a filling of the sound of power in that place, coupled with something that again appeared LIKE tongues of fire. The words enable us to envision a fiery tongue swooping into the room and dividing itself among each member of the nascent church.

Fire has long been a symbol of the Spirit. It has the power to destroy and to purify, as well as to bring light.

It's important to notice that the tongues rested on EACH of them. There was no hierarchy, for there was one Spirit infusing the spirits of each of the 120. Notice also that immediately after the coming of the Spirit, they hit the streets to proclaim Jesus the Messiah, crucified and resurrected. Whenever the Spirit is described as filling one of the disciples, the immediate result is sharing Jesus.

They began to speak in other languages. Although Pentecostals use Acts 1:8 as one of their watchwords, they are mistaken. They can find a partial support from 1 Corinthians 14, but here we are not talking about ecstatic speech or a prayer language. Instead their words were comprehensible. Remember this was a Jewish feast and one that people from all over the world came “home” to Jerusalem to observe. In fact, Luke lists 15 different countries and languages or dialects present. And each heard the gospel in their own language.

I imagine the day going something like this. When the group poured out of the building, they began telling the people they met about Jesus. The Spirit enabled them to speak in whatever language was native to the one they were witnessing to. This sudden explosion of 120 people onto the narrow streets of the city, speaking in all sorts of languages created a hubbub that attracted even more people. As they came up, they saw and heard what was going on and also noted the ones involved were not scholarly types. They recognized some as from Galilee, obviously not priests, nor Levites.

And then there were the cynics. There are always cynics. (And a healthy dose of cynicism can be good in weighing what we hear. Particularly when you venture into the area of politics!) Anyway, these cynics made fun of the happenings and said it's just a bunch of drunks. Really? Peter heard it, and that set him off on his first evangelistic speech. He began by saying you gotta be kidding me! Drunk at nine o'clock in the morning? Not hardly. Take a look at what the prophet Joel said.

Then follows Peter's famous Pentecostal sermon. Note several things.

1 – It was aimed at the Jews and in their thought patterns.

2 - He quoted OT scripture – that was the only Bible they had at the time – and showed how it applied to Christ.

3 – He told the story of Jesus simply and pointedly. Next week we'll see the end of that day and what happened.

What's our takeaway from today's lesson?

If you have received Christ, you have also received His Spirit.

That Spirit guides you in Christian living, and especially in Christian witness.

Peter was essentially a layman, a fisherman, preaching one of his first sermons. Yet a huge crowd responded. It wasn't Peter, it was the Lord. So when you think “I can't,” perhaps YOU can't. But remember HE CAN! So give it a shot!