Wind and Fire

Read it: Acts 1–2

The book of Acts is part two of Luke’s Gospel. Luke’s first volume told what Jesus began to do and teach. This one tells what He went on doing, through His Spirit and His people. It is the story of how the good news travelled from a room in Jerusalem to the capital of the Roman Empire.

Taken up

For forty days after His resurrection, Jesus “presented Himself to them with many convincing proofs that He was alive” (Acts 1:3), and He kept teaching about the kingdom of God. The disciples still had one big question: “Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6). They were still picturing a nation set free from Rome.

Jesus’ answer redrew the map. “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by His own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:7–8). That one verse is like a table of contents for Acts. The story will move outward in widening circles: the city, the surrounding region, the hated neighbours in Samaria, and then everyone, everywhere.

Then “they watched as He was taken up, and a cloud hid Him from their sight” (Acts 1:9). As they stood staring at the sky, two men in white appeared and said, “This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen Him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11). Jesus hadn’t vanished. He had gone to reign, and He would return.

So the disciples went back to Jerusalem and waited and prayed, about a hundred and twenty of them, including Jesus’ mother and His brothers, who had once doubted Him. They chose a man named Matthias to take Judas’s place among the Twelve.

The day of Pentecost

Pentecost was a Jewish harvest festival, the Feast of Weeks, held fifty days after Passover. (“Pentecost” comes from the Greek word for fiftieth.) Jews from all over the world came to Jerusalem for it.

“When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like a mighty rushing wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw tongues like flames of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them” (Acts 2:1–4).

Wind and fire are not random. In both Hebrew and Greek, the same word can mean wind, breath or spirit. God breathed life into Adam. Fire was the sign of God’s presence at the burning bush and on Mount Sinai. Now the wind and fire weren’t on a mountain or in a tent. They rested on each person.

The noise drew a crowd, and they were stunned, “because each one heard them speaking his own language” (Acts 2:6). Luke lists them: people from Persia, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, Egypt, Libya, Rome, Crete and Arabia. Remember the tower of Babel, where God confused humanity’s language and scattered them across the earth? At Pentecost, people of many languages heard one message: “we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” (Acts 2:11). The scattering was beginning to be undone.

Some sneered, “They are drunk on new wine!” (Acts 2:13).

Peter stands up

Then Peter stood up, the same Peter who had denied Jesus to a servant girl a few weeks earlier. “These men are not drunk, as you suppose. It is only the third hour of the day!” (Acts 2:15), which means nine in the morning. This, he said, was what the prophet Joel had promised: “In the last days, God says, I will pour out My Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy” (Acts 2:17). Not just prophets and kings anymore. Everyone, young and old, women and men.

Then he told them about Jesus: they had crucified Him, “But God raised Him from the dead, releasing Him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for Him to be held in its clutches” (Acts 2:24). “God has raised this Jesus to life, to which we are all witnesses” (Acts 2:32). His conclusion was bold: “God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ!” (Acts 2:36).

The crowd “were cut to the heart” and asked, “Brothers, what shall we do?” (Acts 2:37). Peter answered, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). That day “about three thousand were added to the believers” (Acts 2:41).

A new family

So the church was born. Not a building, but people. “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer” (Acts 2:42). They shared their possessions with anyone in need. They ate together in their homes “with gladness and sincerity of heart” (Acts 2:46). “And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47).

Think about how far the theme of God’s presence has travelled. In the wilderness, “the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle” (Exodus 40:34). Now God’s Spirit filled ordinary people. Paul would later ask, “Do you not know that you yourselves are God’s temple, and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16).

Where Jesus is in this

Pentecost is not the Spirit taking over from Jesus. It is Jesus at work from His throne. Peter explains it himself: “Exalted, then, to the right hand of God, He has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear” (Acts 2:33).

That is the promise Jesus made on Easter evening, “I am sending the promise of My Father upon you” (Luke 24:49), kept fifty days later. And the King’s reign spreads not by armies but by witnesses, ordinary people carrying the news of a crucified and risen Lord to the ends of the earth.

Think about it: The church began as a group of people who ate together, prayed together and shared what they had. Which of those would be hardest for you, and which do you most wish you had?

Go deeper: The Holy Spirit, or Power from on High by A. B. Simpson — Simpson calls Acts 1:8 the keynote and table of contents of the whole book of Acts, and argues that the power Jesus promised is not a force we store up but the presence of a Person, like a tram drawing its power from the wire overhead rather than from a battery. Start with chapter 9, “Power from on High”.