Commentary - Acts 2:1-13

Bird's-eye view

The second chapter of Acts records the seismic shift in the history of redemption that Jesus had promised. This is the inauguration of the new covenant age, the birth of the Christian Church. Having ascended to His throne, King Jesus now pours out His Spirit upon His people, equipping them to be His witnesses to the ends of the earth. This event is not a quiet, internal, sentimental affair; it is a riot of sound and sight, a heavenly invasion of earth. The coming of the Spirit is marked by wind and fire, fulfilling Old Testament foreshadowings and demonstrating that God Himself has taken up residence with His people in a new and powerful way. The immediate result is the miraculous speaking of foreign languages, a powerful sign that reverses the curse of Babel and signals the gathering of a new humanity from every tribe and tongue into one body. This chapter is the foundational account of the Church's empowerment, and it sets the stage for the explosive growth of the gospel throughout the rest of the book and, indeed, throughout history.

The reaction of the crowd, a mixture of devout faith, honest bewilderment, and cynical mockery, is the same reaction the gospel has always received. Peter's subsequent sermon will explain the theological significance of these events, but the events themselves are the raw material. This is God acting in history, fulfilling His promises, and launching His great project of global reclamation. Pentecost is not just an interesting historical episode; it is the permanent reality of the Church. We live in the age of the Spirit, the age inaugurated by this glorious and chaotic descent of God's presence.

Outline

Context In Acts

Acts 2 is the direct fulfillment of the promise given by Jesus in Acts 1. In the previous chapter, Jesus commanded His disciples not to depart from Jerusalem but to "wait for the promise of the Father," which He identified as the baptism of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:4-5). He told them they would receive power when the Holy Spirit came upon them and that they would be His witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the end of the earth (Acts 1:8). After giving this command, Jesus ascended into heaven. The disciples then returned to Jerusalem, devoted themselves to prayer, and chose Matthias to replace Judas, bringing the number of the apostles back to twelve. Chapter 2, therefore, is the narrative of that promise being kept. It is the engine being switched on. The power arrives, and the mission begins. The events of Pentecost are the divine answer to the disciples' prayerful waiting and the necessary prerequisite for everything else that happens in the book of Acts.

Key Issues

The Invasion of the Spirit

We must not domesticate what happened on the day of Pentecost. This was not a quiet committee meeting where a new initiative was launched. This was D-Day. This was a heavenly invasion. When Jesus ascended, He went to the right hand of the Father to receive His kingdom and to assume all authority in heaven and on earth. His first act as enthroned king was to send the Spirit, His promised Vicar, to earth. The phenomena that accompanied the Spirit's arrival, the sound of a hurricane and the appearance of fire, are signs of God's active, powerful, and sometimes violent presence. This is the God who descended on Sinai in fire and smoke. This is the God whose voice is like the roar of many waters. The coming of the Spirit is the personal presence of this God, not as an external threat, but as an internal, empowering reality. The Church was not born in a sterile boardroom; it was born in a tempest. This is the power that turned a handful of frightened disciples into a world-conquering force. It was not their power, but the power of the One who had taken up residence within them.

Verse by Verse Commentary

1 And when the day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all together in one place.

The timing here is crucial. God's redemptive work unfolds according to a divinely appointed calendar. Pentecost was one of the three great pilgrimage feasts of Israel, celebrated fifty days after Passover. It was the feast of weeks, a harvest festival celebrating the gathering of the wheat. For this new thing to happen when the day had "fully come" means that the Old Testament reality was now being filled up with its ultimate meaning. The disciples were gathered "all together in one place," likely the same upper room mentioned in the first chapter. Their unity and obedience in waiting are the context for the Spirit's arrival. The old covenant feast of harvest was about to be fulfilled in the first great harvest of souls for the kingdom of God.

2 And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting.

The first sign of the Spirit's arrival is auditory. It came "suddenly," without warning, and it came "from heaven," indicating its divine origin. Luke is careful to say it was a noise like a wind; it was not a natural weather event. This was a supernatural sound that mimicked a hurricane, but it was contained entirely within the house. In both Hebrew (ruach) and Greek (pneuma), the word for Spirit is the same as the word for wind or breath. This audible sign was a powerful pun from God. The very breath of God was being poured out, the creative Spirit who hovered over the waters in Genesis 1. This was a new creation event, and it began with the sound of power.

3 And there appeared to them tongues like fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them.

After the sound comes the sight. Again, Luke uses a simile: "tongues like fire." This was not literal fire that would consume them, but a visible manifestation of the divine presence that took the form of fire. Fire in Scripture consistently represents the presence, purity, and judgment of God. John the Baptist had predicted that Jesus would baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire (Matt 3:11). Here is the fulfillment. These tongues of fire "rested on each one of them," signifying that this was not a corporate experience alone, but a profoundly personal one. The Spirit of God was now indwelling each individual believer, equipping each one for service. The glory of God that once filled the tabernacle and temple now distributes itself to fill each living stone of God's new temple.

4 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance.

Here is the internal reality and its immediate external result. To be "filled with the Holy Spirit" is to be brought under His direct influence and control, to be empowered by His presence. This is the baptism of the Spirit that Jesus promised. The first evidence of this filling was that they "began to speak with other tongues." The word for tongues here is glossa, which means languages. This was not ecstatic gibberish; it was the miraculous ability to speak in real human languages they had never learned. This was entirely the work of the Spirit; He was giving them the "utterance." The apostles were not in control of this; they were the instruments through which the Spirit was speaking.

5-6 Now there were Jews living in Jerusalem, devout men from every nation under heaven. And when this sound occurred, the multitude came together, and were bewildered because each one of them was hearing them speak in his own language.

God had providentially arranged the audience. Because it was the Feast of Pentecost, Jerusalem was filled with Jewish pilgrims from all over the Roman world and beyond. These were "devout men," sincere in their faith, who had come to worship God. The "sound" that drew the crowd was likely the hurricane-like noise from verse 2. When they gathered, they were thrown into confusion, "bewildered," because this band of Galileans was speaking, and every man in the crowd heard the message in his own native dialect. The miracle was not in the hearing, as some have suggested, but in the speaking. God was speaking the language of the nations through the mouths of His apostles.

7-8 So they were astounded and marveling, saying, “Behold, are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we each hear them in our own language in which we were born?

The crowd's astonishment deepens as they process what is happening. They identify the speakers as Galileans, who were known for their rough, rural accent and were not generally regarded as sophisticated or educated linguists. This was the first-century equivalent of a group of uneducated country bumpkins suddenly speaking flawless Mandarin, Farsi, and German. The miracle was undeniable. It defied all natural explanation. "How is it," they ask, that this is happening? This is the question that every true miracle should provoke, leading the observer to look for a supernatural cause.

9-11 Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the district of Libya around Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs, we hear them in our own tongues speaking of the mighty deeds of God.”

Luke provides a representative list of the nations present. This is not a haphazard list; it follows a general geographic pattern, starting in the far east (Parthia) and moving west, encircling the Mediterranean. It is a virtual table of nations, reminiscent of Genesis 10. This is the great reversal of the Tower of Babel. At Babel, God confused the languages to scatter the rebellious nations. Here at Pentecost, God miraculously bridges the language barrier to gather a new people from all nations. And what is the content of this miraculous speech? They are "speaking of the mighty deeds of God." This is not idle chatter. The Spirit-given speech is theological. It is doxological. It is the proclamation of God's magnificent work in Christ.

12 And they all continued in astonishment and great perplexity, saying to one another, “What does this mean?”

This is the proper response of the honest seeker when confronted with a work of God. They were amazed, perplexed, and they asked the right question: "What does this mean?" They recognized that this was not a random event, but a significant one. It was a sign that demanded interpretation. This question provides the perfect setup for Peter's sermon, which will follow immediately. God provides the sign, and then He provides the sermon to explain the sign.

13 But others, mocking, were saying, “They are full of new wine.”

Here is the second, and tragically common, response to the work of God. Where some see a miracle and ask for its meaning, others see the same event and resort to cynical mockery. To attribute this glorious miracle to drunkenness was not an honest mistake; it was a willful refusal to see the obvious. "New wine" or sweet wine was particularly potent. This accusation is absurd on its face, as Peter will point out, but it reveals a heart that is hardened against God. When the supernatural breaks in, the unbelieving heart will grasp for any naturalistic explanation, no matter how flimsy, to avoid having to deal with God. This division in the crowd, between honest inquiry and hardened mockery, is a pattern that will repeat itself throughout the book of Acts and all of church history.

Application

The story of Pentecost is the story of our birthright as Christians. The same Spirit who descended with wind and fire now indwells every believer. We often live as though we are spiritual orphans, trying to live the Christian life in our own strength, when the third person of the Trinity has taken up residence in our hearts. The power of Pentecost is not just for a few super-apostles; it is the normative power for the Christian church.

This power is not given for our personal enjoyment or for spiritual thrill-seeking. The Spirit filled them, and they immediately began to speak "the mighty deeds of God." The purpose of the Spirit's filling is witness. He empowers us to speak of Christ. For many of us, the gift of tongues we need is not a foreign language, but the gift of a bold tongue in our own language, the courage to speak of Jesus to our neighbors, our coworkers, and our family. We must stop making excuses for our timidity and start asking God to fill us with His Spirit for the task He has given us.

Furthermore, Pentecost teaches us that the gospel is for every nation. The miracle of languages was a clear sign that God's intention was to create a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual family. Any church that is defined by racial or cultural uniformity is falling short of the Pentecostal vision. The gospel breaks down the dividing walls of hostility and creates one new man in Christ. Our mission, therefore, is to joyfully participate in that global, Babel-reversing project, proclaiming the mighty deeds of God to every tribe and tongue, until the earth is filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.