'Ac 2:1-13

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The church is born (Ac 2:1-13) Pentecost was a Jewish harvest festival held on the Sunday fifty days after Passover, when Israelites presented the first portion of their harvest to God (Lev 23:15-21).

It was therefore a fitting day to mark the birth of the Christian church. Christ, the true Passover had been sacrificed (1 Cor 5:7), and now fifty days later God poured out his Spirit on that small group of disciples who were to become the first members of the church of Jesus Christ.

In Old Testament times a person who received a special gift of God’s Spirit may have announced a message from God as evidence of the Spirit’s presence (e.g. Num 11:26).

So also on the Day of Pentecost, when the followers of Jesus received the promised gift of his Spirit, they spoke words from God, and they did so in ‘other tongues’. This means that their speech was in words that did not belong to their own language and that they did not understand, unless someone interpreted them (Ac 2:1-4; cf. 1 Cor 14:13-19).

When the disciples moved from the house into the street outside (possibly on the way to the temple), people were attracted by the noisy activity. Some Jews of the Dispersion who were in Jerusalem for the festival recognized their local languages in the speech of the disciples and praised God. Others recognized no languages at all and accused the disciples of being drunk (Ac 2:5-13).