Different Languages
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2022 · 26 June 2022
There are two monumental promises that Jesus made, to build His church and to send His Holy Spirit. Both of those promises came true at the same moment. The church was born, and the Spirit came on the day of Pentecost. The baptism of the Spirit is defined in Scripture as the spiritual event that places believers into the church, into the body of Christ. So on the day of Pentecost, the Spirit comes.
The Holy Spirit is placed inside the believers, which then becomes the norm throughout the rest of church history. And the Spirit who is inside the believers also unites the believer into the church, which is in union with Christ so the church becomes the very body of Christ. The record of this great event is here in Acts 2. And it’s straightforward as to what is happening.
Here is the birth of the church by means of the Lord, Himself. I want to break this event into three sections: the evidence of the Spirit’s coming, the effect of the Spirit’s coming, and the explanation of the Spirit’s coming. We discussed the evidence of the Spirit’s coming last Sunday. There are 120 believers gathered in one place. They had been told to wait in Jerusalem until the Spirit came.
At the day of Pentecost the Spirit came. Fifty days after Passover was the Feast of Harvest. It was the feast of first fruits because the full harvest hadn’t been brought in yet. So this was a foretaste of the full harvest. This is just a foretaste of all that the Spirit will do through the rest of the history. And it is a foretaste for believers what the Spirit will do when He brings His own into eternal glory.
So there they were on the day of Pentecost, all together in one place. And suddenly there came from Heaven a sovereign work of God on God’s schedule on the day of Pentecost. There came from Heaven a noise, a blast of God’s breath, a noise that was like a violent rushing wind. And that is the Holy Spirit Himself. That sound filled the whole house and most likely was heard beyond that.
And then there appeared to them tongues as of fire. That is also a visible phenomenon. And those little tongues are distributed among all 120, and one of them rests on each. This is an indication by this manifestation that the rushing wind of the Holy Spirit has not come in some generic way, but has come personally, and rests on every believer the same way the Holy Spirit came in the form of a dove on Christ.
So this immense event launches the church. When the Holy Spirit who has been with them takes up residence in them, immerses them in the unity with Christ, gives them the common, eternal life, which all believers possess, and therefore, makes them one with each other. Each believer is joined to the Lord in one spirit. And the body of Christ is constituted at that point.
This was the first time. Every time a believer is saved subsequent to that, that same non-experiential reality takes place, where the Holy Spirit takes up residence, saturating the life of that believer, granting the same eternal life that all other believers have, and therefore, making that believer one with all other believers in the body of Christ. Additionally, they were filled with the Spirit.
The filling is when the Spirit is moving through us to produce the right attitudes and the right actions. But Paul in Ephesians 5 says, “Be being kept filled with the Spirit.” It’s a filling that’s in motion, like the filling of wind in sails. The idea is total control, yielding to the Holy Spirit. It’s further defined in Colossians 3:16 as letting the word of Christ dwell in you richly, walking in obedience.
As we see in the book of Acts repeatedly, “They were filled with the Spirit.” That’s a daily reality. There was a very interesting result immediately. Verse 4, “They began to speak with other languages as the Spirit was giving them utterances.” You probably see the word ‘tongues’ occurs in your Bible, and that really is an unfortunate translation and it just keeps surviving.
It wouldn’t be unfortunate, because it’s a synonym for languages, except that has been culturally loaded with some confusing preconceptions. The Charismatic Movement and the Pentecostal Movement has been primarily defined by quote/unquote “speaking in tongues.” By their own admission, it’s not a language. It’s gibberish. And this goes back to the earliest history of the movement.
In the 1890s, there was a group of people in Topeka, Kansas, led by Parham, who decides that the baptism of the Holy Spirit for every believer if you seek the baptism, should be accompanied with speaking in some kind of foreign language. Eventually, when it became clear that nobody could speak a foreign language, there was a retreat to redefine what this language was.
They came up with the idea that it is some kind of strange speech. This had never been a part of orthodox Christianity. It had never been a part of the true church. It had never been a part of sound doctrine. It had never been connected to the baptism of the Holy Spirit in the history of the church, going all the way back to the apostles. Ecstatic speech through the ages is connected to cults and false religions.
There has been strange speech associated with demonic behavior, some forms of paganism, but never in Christianity. But starting in the 1900s, there was the booming Pentecostal church, which eventually became the Charismatic church. And they were advocates of the fact that the baptism of the Holy Spirit is a repeatable event, and if it really happens, you’ll speak in this non-language.
They began to speak other languages. Were they real languages? Yes. Verse 7-11, Then they were all amazed and marveled, saying to one another, “Look, are not all these who speak Galileans? 8 And how is it that we hear, each in our own language in which we were born? 9 Parthians and Medes and Elamites, those dwelling in Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,
10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya adjoining Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, 11 Cretans and Arabs—we hear them speaking in our own tongues the wonderful works of God.” And they all continue with amazement. Now, these people are all Jews. These are Jews that have come to Jerusalem from the Diaspora, having been scattered all over the Mediterranean.
These Jews have learned to speak those languages because they live in those places, but this is what’s so shocking about it. Never have they heard praises to God in a Gentile language, because when they went to the synagogue, all their services were conducted in Hebrew or Aramaic. This would be a bizarre experience because they believed that Hebrew was God’s language.
But now for the first time, they are hearing the wonderful works of God in their own Gentile language. What does that mean? They’re hearing God’s attributes and God’s works rehearsed to them by these Jewish believers in Gentile languages. Never have they recited the Old Testament in any other language than their own language. This is absolutely shocking.
This is a very important sign. This is a phenomenon that went on for a little while. In 55 Ad, 25 years later, it’s still around. This gift was still being exercised by some believers, because it’s mentioned in 1 Corinthians, which was written about 55 AD. But after that, you never hear about it in any other book, all the way into the ‘90s when John writes the final New Testament books.
We could say it had a life of about 25 years. It was corrupted by the Corinthians, and in 1 Corinthians 12:13-14, you see Paul trying to regulate this thing. There were other people in Corinth counterfeiting it and standing up and purporting to speak in another language and cursing Jesus Christ, perhaps under a demonic influence. So Paul has to write to the Corinthians to regulate this.
But 1 Corinthians 13:8 says, “Whether there be languages or the gift of languages, they will cease.” So if you look at the history of the New Testament, they ceased. They’re not a part of the Pastoral Epistles. Prophecy too, will cease at a different time, because in the future, there will be prophecy in the Millennial Kingdom. But he’s comparing things that cease with things that are forever.
Like love and hope; and the greatest of these is love. Those virtues never cease. He just says there are things that cease, and things that don’t cease. Prophecy goes on, but it’ll cease, because when you get to Heaven, you’ll know as you’re known. All we have to do is look and see. Did they? The answer is yes. What were they for? “Well, it says, ‘They spoke of the wonderful works of God.’”
Because the wonderful works of God are all written in the Old Testament in Hebrew, and all Jews would have understood them. When you come to 1 Corinthians 14:20, Paul says, “You need to grow up in thinking.” Verse 21, “In the law, it is written, “By men of strange languages, and by the lips of strangers, I will speak to this people, and even so, they will not listen to me,” says the Lord.”
So different languages are for a sign to unbelievers. In the Old Testament, a sign is a divine purpose to say something to unbelievers. In verse 21, there’s a quote from Isaiah 28 which has a prophecy of judgment. The leaders of Israel are rebuked for the wretchedness of their lives. God, who spoke to them through faithful prophets, warned them in the language they understood.
But God when His mercy and His patience is exhausted, will then begin speaking to them in a language they cannot understand. And that signaled the arrival of the Babylonians. In Deuteronomy 28, Moses predicted the coming invasion of Israel if they were not faithful to God. And Moses in Deuteronomy 28:49 said that when that invasion comes, they will come upon you speaking a foreign language.
Moses warned of this. Isaiah said it would come. Jeremiah says it would come. And it came in the form of the Babylonian hoards who came in and massacred the people of the southern kingdom of Judah, destroyed the temple, destroyed Jerusalem and hauled people off captive. They were being hauled off by people whose language they couldn’t speak to a country whose language they didn’t understand.
What did Israel learn about a language they don’t understand? That this is a sign of judgment from God that judgment is coming because of unrighteousness, because of sin, because of unbelief and because of apostasy. What did it mean on the day of Pentecost when all of a sudden all these believers were taking the place of a prophet and starting to speak in Gentile languages?
What is the judgment on Israel? Israel is at this point set aside, and the church is born to take her place. In the day of the birth of the church, Pentecost, and when Paul wrote 1 Corinthians, and the 25 years in between, God continued the use of this sign to declare to the Jews that they were going to be set aside as a people for their unbelief and apostasy. This is a sign of judgment on Israel.
The apostles warned, and the Holy Spirit gave some the gift that would continue to be a warning, and in 70 AD, the judgment came. Jesus predicted it. Luke 13:35, “Your house will be desolate” in the Olivet discourse, this nation will be destroyed. The principle is clear. Languages were used in the Old Testament for a sign of judgment. And they are also used in the New Testament as a sign of judgment.
That city was full of Jews, who were hearing a pronouncement of judgment, as God was setting aside Israel and carving out a new people. And in Christ, there’s neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male or female. No more a nation but a people from every nation, that’s the church. Has God forever set aside Israel? No. Romans 11:5, “God will one day save a remnant of the nation Israel.”
And even now, Jews are being saved daily along with Gentiles, but the middle wall is down. It’s no longer an ethnic people. It’s no longer a single nation. This is a profound day when the church is born. Speaking in these foreign languages while to Israel was a sign of judgment, to the rest of the world, it was a sign of blessing. What it was saying is, “God is going to make his people from every tongue, tribe and nation.”
That’s why Paul, in Romans 11:12 says, “The fall of Israel is riches for the world.” Let’s go back to Acts 2:5, “And there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men, from every nation under heaven.” It was a sign to this people of judgment, but it was also a sign to the Jews that the wonderful works of God were now going to go to the Gentiles, and that’s the church.
Acts 8:14-17 says, “Now when the apostles who were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them, 15 who, when they had come down, prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit. 16 For as yet He had fallen upon none of them. They had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. 17 Then they laid hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.”
All the Jewish believers who came with Peter were amazed. Why? Because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on Gentiles. How did they know that? For they were hearing them speaking with languages and exalting God, which is exactly what the Jews did at the day of Pentecost. So you have a repeat of Pentecost, at the home of Cornelius with the apostles and Jewish believers.
The Jews needed proof of everybody’s inclusion, and there it was. From then on, we all receive the Holy Spirit and all are baptized with the Holy Spirit into the body of Christ at the time of our salvation. The Holy Spirit comes and deposits within us eternal life, and that’s the shared life that flows through all believers and makes us one with each other. So that was the birth of the church. Let us pray.