"Tongues" Sermon: Acts 2:1-11

“Tongues”
[Acts 2:1-11]
May 23, 2010 Second Reformed Church

When Jesus ascended back to the Right Hand of God – to the Throne of the Son – He told the eleven, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8, ESV). Ten days later – fifty days after Jesus rose from the dead – God the Holy Spirit indwelled the disciples on the day of Pentecost.

Today – in the Church Year – is Pentecost Sunday – the day we remember the events of the first Pentecost. You may remember it was about a year ago that we looked at this same text as we began our look at the book of Acts. So we may remember what happened:

The disciples were all gathered together in Jerusalem – hiding still in fear for what the Jews might do to them – and there was suddenly the sound of a mighty rushing wind and visible tongues of fire above the head of each believer. These were audible and visible signs that Jesus’ Promise of the indwelling of God the Holy Spirit had come to pass – they – and all Christians since them – were indwelled and given power to do the good works that God has planned for us to do. And they, on that day, were given the gift of being able to instantly speak in the tongues – the languages – of every person in Jerusalem. Do we remember why?

At that time – shortly after the Passover – there were devout Jews who had come from all over the world to worship in the Temple in Jerusalem. There were Parthians, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, Libyians, Romans, Jews, proselytes, Cretans, and Arabians. There were people from Italy to Arabia, Turkey to Egypt and Lybia. All of these people – who spoke many different languages – were in Jerusalem – but they would be traveling home – and the disciples did not have time to learn all the languages of the world to be able to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ to all of these people before they left – and this Good News could not wait – so God made them instantly able to speak in all of the languages of the peoples there.

And the people were shocked to hear these Galileans speaking in their home languages. Some made fun of them and tried to deny that they were speaking real languages. But many came to believe in Jesus Christ as the One and Only Savior, sent by God for the salvation of all who will believe.

In considering that it was on Pentecost that the people of God were gifted to be able to speak the Word of God in the tongues of those who needed to hear it, I thought we might do well to quickly look at the Power of the Tongue – or the Word – of God, as we see it throughout the Scripture – to take a brief survey of what God does with words.

In the beginning – it would seem the best place to start would be the beginning. Before the beginning, there was no time, no space, no physical stuff – only God. “And God said....and there was....” (Genesis 1:3, ESV).

Light, water, earth, plants, the stars, all types of animals, including human beings, who are created in the Image of God, were spoken by God into existence by His Word. Can we imagine total nothingness, outside of time – then hear God utter the Word that caused the physical universe to come into being and into time, according to His Pleasure and Will? It’s fairly incomprehensible, isn’t it? But it says something about God, doesn’t it?

One of the foundational questions in the study of philosophy is, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” “Why does anything exist?” A popular answer for the last hundred years or so has been, “Well, once upon a time, there was some stuff – don’t ask where it came from – and it blew up for some reason, and then over billions of years, chance and accident caused everything to exist, although there is no proof of any of this.”

But God tells us, God, the Almighty spoke the Word: Time. Space. Matter. Ocean. Land. Tree. Platypus. Kangaroo. Adam. What a Mighty God is this Who by His Very Word spoken created everything that is out of nothing and pronounced it good – very good (Genesis 1:31).

Second, God said, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out of my mouth; it shall not return empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:8-11, ESV).

God tells us that God cannot fail to accomplish what God purposes to do. Everything that God says He will do, He does. Everything He says will come to pass, will come to pass. Every promise that God makes, God will keep. What friend do we have other than God Who will never fail us and can promise that everything – every Word that comes from His Tongue will be fulfilled and succeed and accomplish its purpose? Whom else can we turn to and trust because from the beginning of Creation, He has never failed and He cannot fail and He will not fail us? To Whom else can we go and know He will always listen and always answer us according to His Will – which will be done?

Third, we find that the Very Salvation that God provides for us is His Word: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. ...

“The true light, which enlightens everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:1-5, 9-13, ESV).

The Salvation Whom God provides is His Son, the Word. He is the One Who came to make atonement between God and us. He has chosen a people for Himself according to what God has willed and spoken to Him that He as the Word might be our salvation, and that His Word might be our salvation.

So Salvation is the Word of God Incarnate, Who cannot fail to save all the people that God has given to Him. Is God the Word and the Word of God precious to you? They should be: we should be longing in love to be with Jesus and longing to be able to spend more time in God’s Word, more time hearing it preached and taught, spending more time studying it with other Christians. If God is in us, is He not our First Love?

Our problem is found in seeing that we are born sinners, and we cannot tame our tongues by our own will. James explains: “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. For we all stumble in many ways, and if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body. If we put bits into the mouths of horses so that they obey us, we guide their whole body as well. Look at the ships also: though they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things.

“How great a fire is set ablaze by such a small fire And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell. For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of decay and poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water? Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water” (James 3:1-12, ESV).

It would seem there is no hope for the use of our tongues – but God. We cannot control our tongues, but by the power of God Who dwells in we who believe, it can be controlled and used to the glory of God.

Remember what Jesus said, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8, ESV). And this is the hope that we have for our feeble and sinful tongues as we remember the first Pentecost: God has been given to indwell us and He will use our tongues to spread His Gospel – God – for His own reasons, has chosen to use the tongues of human beings to spread His Word – the Gospel of the Word – the Good New of Salvation through Jesus Christ Alone. You and I have been gifted with gifts and abilities and God will grab hold of our tongues and guide them to speak what He would have us speak for the sake of His Gospel. And as we have already seen, if it is the Will of God to use our tongues to announce His Gospel to this world, it will come to pass without fail and God will accomplish everything God intended without fail.

Do we often think about the dangers of our tongue? About the filth and the lies and the nonsense we allow to pass over them and out of our mouths – every one of us here. Oh, that we would be amazed that God would choose to use our tongues to spread His Holy Word and that this knowledge – this truth – would cause us to be slow to speak, careful what we say, praying for help, working hard to make sure that what we speak is nothing that will offend the Holiness of God or turn someone away from Jesus, the Only Savior.

Sixth, we can learn something from the description of the tongue of Jesus: When Jesus appeared to John on the island of Patmos, John saw Jesus, in part, like this: “In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength” (Revelation 1:16, ESV).

Have you ever seen a two-edged sword – whether in reality or in a movie or in a book? There are one-edged swords that only have one sharp edge – one cutting edge. And there are two-edged swords that are sharp – cutting – on both edges. The purpose of having a two-edged is so that the swordsman can slice through swinging forward and then slice through coming back. When John tells us that Jesus’ Tongue appeared as a two-edged sword, we are being told that what comes out of Jesus’ Mouth – off of His Tongue – cuts like a two-edged sword. The Word of Jesus – the Word of God – cuts like a two-edged sword – it cuts – slices through – as it goes out and as it comes back.

What we are doing right now is a perfect example of this: I am preaching the Word of God to you – I am telling you what God has said, that it should cut you, slice through your sin, affect you and change you and cause you to mature in the faith. But the Word of God is a two-edged sword – and as I preach what God has said to you, it comes back to me and cuts through me, through my sin, affecting me and challenging me and causing me, Lord Willing, to mature in the faith. Any pastor who ascends to the pulpit with a cavalier attitude is a fool. And any pastor who is not laid low and humbled and instructed by the Word of God before he preaches it to his congregation, ought to abandon his pulpit until he has been instructed by the Lord, for such a man has no business in the pulpit like that.

Thanks be to God that He Who lives in us and He Who died for us is He Who is the Almighty God Who brings all things to pass according to His Will. Knowing that, we can trust Him and be assured that He will cause His Word to accomplish what He has planned it to accomplish. That’s not an excuse for you or me to slack off in our study of God’s Word. But it is a comfort to know that God will not fail, even though we fail Him and each other.

Let us end our brief look at the Power of the Tongue and Word of God in considering the end. For just as God brought all things into existence with His Word, so He will bring a close to this age and bring the new heavens and the new earth and the New Jerusalem among us:

Paul is writing about the return of Jesus: “For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God” (I Thessalonians 4:16a, ESV). When Jesus returns, He will come will a shout of command – “Now ” – or something like that – and the whole world – every person living on the whole planet will see Him coming, and He will bring His own to Himself (Matthew 24:29-31).

We didn’t exist when God spoke and all things came into existence. We may be here on earth to hear Jesus shout His Cry of Return. Between now and then, God has given us tongues to speak and a Word to tell every tribe and people and nation – and God Himself lives in us to guide our tongues and help us through His Power and the gifts and abilities we need to be His people where He has placed each of us.

We may not every have the need of ability to spontaneously speak in a foreign language as the disciples did on that first day of Pentecost. But each one of us has been called to speak. How have we been using our tongues?

Let us pray:
Almighty God, we thank You for showing Yourself to be Almighty, Glorious, and Holy – the Giver of the Word of Salvation through Your Son the Word, our God and Savior, Jesus. We thank You for the gift of the indwelling of God the Holy Spirit. And we ask that You would open our mouths and take hold of our tongues and use them to Your Glory in whatever way You would use us, for we exist for Your Glory, and You are our joy. And it is in Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen.