Pentecost sparked an international effort to include everyone, Jewish and non-Jewish, into God’s family, which is one reason we see the “speaking in tongues” miracle happening. In Greek, “tongues” can refer to real human languages, and that seems to be Luke’s point in Acts 2:8. He captures the question everyone was asking: “How is it that we each hear them in our own language to which we were born?”
Jesus’ apostles are all Jewish and from a small world, the northern Galilean part of Israel (Acts 2:7). They speak the same language. So getting the good news of Jesus to the whole world with them alone would be tricky. Unless—what if the whole world came to them, and they quickly became multilingual?
In Acts 2:5, Luke says that Jews “from every nation under heaven” were gathering in Jerusalem at the time for the Pentecost feast. What is the Feast of Pentecost? This is a major Jewish harvest party—also called Shavu’ot, or the Feast of Weeks—that happened 50 days after Passover. It is one of three main festivals that brought hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to Jerusalem for a big celebration.
The “whole world” had come to them. And when the wind and fire showed up, everyone was “bewildered because each one of them was hearing [each of the apostles] speaking in his own language” (Acts 2:6).
It’s almost like Isaiah was foreshadowing this Acts 2 Pentecost in the Old Testament. Back when Isaiah was promising the eventual restoration of Israel, he spoke for Yahweh, saying, “You are my witnesses … and I am God. Even from eternity, I am he” (Isa. 43:12-13). Now, the people hear Jesus saying, “You shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and Samaria, and as far as the remotest part of the earth” (Acts 1:8). That’s a whole-world statement—nobody gets left behind.
The apostles are witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection and God’s deep, unbreakable love for all people. And to help them tell everyone from everywhere in the world, God empowers them to become multilingual right then and there, in the middle of a massive crowd of international travelers. Again, Isaiah spoke for Yahweh when he wrote about this kind of mission beforehand. “I will also make you a light of the nations, so that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (Isa. 49:6).
This is the moment when God’s divine fire identified the new temple, the new place where Heaven and Earth overlap, which is the Church community made of Jesus’ people. Not a mountain, not a beautiful building or a sacred place or space—God’s temple is made with unexpected men and women. God’s dwelling place is in people who bear witness to the risen Jesus by choosing to live in his way of love. And the whole world is eventually going to meet God through this community of people who love God and others like Jesus does.
