5 Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. 6 When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. 7 Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? 9 Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,[b] 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome 11 (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” 12 Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”
13 Some, however, made fun of them and said, “They have had too much wine.”
Dig Deeper
On a recent trip my family and I had a few extra hours to spend in a rather large airport in Washington DC on our way to Africa. While we were sitting there, we realized that our youngest son had quite a bit more energy coiled up in his body than would really be helpful on a long flight in a confined plane, no matter how large the jet was. So I decided to take him for a nice, brisk walk through the airport to burn off some of his effusive energy. As we made our way through the airport we found one long walkway that had the flags of all kinds hanging from the ceiling. First we went through an area where they had the flags of every state and territory that was part of the United States. Then came a very long walkway that had the flags of countries from all over the world. My son had a great time walking up and down this long hall that was probably nearly a half mile and trying to name the flags of the different countries. Because of his older brother’s affinity for world cup soccer video games, he had an uncanny ability to rattle off which flags belonged to which countries. He was, in fact, far better at it than I was, due in part to the fact that I realized that many of the countries and flags that I had learned and become familiar with while in school no longer exist and many of these flags were new to me. As we made our way back through the flags for the third time (he really enjoyed the flag naming game) he asked me if this was absolutely every flag of every single country in the world. That was a good question. As we walked further, I realized that it wasn’t. He didn’t understand the point, though, of having so many flags up there if they weren’t going to have them all and he was quite concerned about the poor countries that weren’t represented. I explained to him that the point of the flags was not necessarily to give recognition to each and every country around the world but was, rather, to make the point that this was an international airport that sent and received people from all over the world. The hanging flags were a symbol that this airport was actually a gateway to the world.
The great detail that Luke goes into in this section, especially when it comes to the home countries of those present, as he describes the incredible outpouring of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost can seem largely unnecessary and even pointless if we fail to remember the promises of God. When God came to Abraham and promised him a family, he told him that one day this family would make him the father of all nations (Gen. 12:1-3; 17:1-5). Paul argued that when God came to Abraham he knew that he would declare the nations to be part of his family one day (this is basically what justification is—the time when God declares us to be in his family and therefore saved from our sins). Paul says, in Galatians 3:8-9 that “Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: ‘All nations will be blessed through you’. So those who rely on faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. “ The declaration that all nations would be part of God’s family, says Paul, was a proclamation by God of the gospel in advance. The promise of all nations joining God’s family was an important and central aspect of the gospel.
If we remember that this was a central promise of the gospel then this section makes perfect sense. God’s promises were finally coming into focus and they were being poured out just as he promised. He had promised to pour out his Spirit and bless all nations of the world through his Son and that was now happening. So if the goal of the gospel was to create one family of many nations then it would be important that all nations would be represented somehow on the day when the family was finally opened to all.
This is why God tells us that there were God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven that were present when Jesus’ disciples came pouring out from the house where they had been overwhelmingly baptized by the Holy Spirit in ways that could only be compared to the power of wind and fire. As they came into the public arena, they were surrounded by Jews from every nation. These would have been Jews that were scattered during the diaspora, the time when Jews were exiled hundreds of years previous and scattered throughout the known world. The word that Luke uses for “staying” seems to imply that these Jews were people who had grown up as natives of other nations who had come to basically retire in Jerusalem and live out their lives there, although there were, no doubt, many who were there as temporary pilgrims during the Passover.
Luke described that these people were from all directions and all reaches of the known world. It is not, however, a list of every country in the known world. Many have tried to find some sort of rhyme or reason to this list but there seems to be none on Luke’s part, and that is, I believe part of the point. What he describes is a hodge-podge of people from countries all over the world. Luke well knew that these weren’t all of the known parts of the world and he surely knew that there was much more out there beyond the traditionally “known” parts of the world but this was not a geography lesson. His point was that the gospel was a message that, because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the people of all nations could finally join God’s family and no longer be aliens and strangers to God’s people (Eph. 2:19). This day of Pentecost was not the complete fulfillment of that promise but the firstfruits of it. It included only the Jews that were present but they were Jews from every nation. This was the beginning of a family that would spread to the very ends of the earth.
It is a great reminder that God’s people have always meant to include every tribe, language, people, and nation (Rev. 5:9). This was God’s plan for his family all along. It means that his people are called to make sure that the gospel goes out to all the nations (Matt. 28:19: Lk. 24:46). It would be easy to make ourselves feel better by saying that this call is being fulfilled by the likes of missionaries and such as they take the gospel around the world, and that would be true in one sense. But being God’s one family of all nations also demands of us that every outpost of God’s family is committed to being comprised of and reaching out to the people of every tribe, language, people group, and nation that are in the reaches of their influence. There is simply no room for racism in the church of God. There is no room for separation of people groups in God’s family. The fact that there are traditionally white churches, black churches, and the like are declarations of exactly the opposite message of the gospel.
In Nelson Mandela’s auto-biography, “The Long Walk to Freedom,” he describes that while being in prison for the crime of fighting for freedom from apartheid for the non-white people of South Africa, that the guards would mistreat him and his fellow prisoners all week and remind them that they were merely “black boys.” Then on Sunday they would conscientiously make sure that the prisoners would have worship service because of the commitment of the whites to their Christian religion. Situations like this are an abomination to God. When people encounter God’s true family they should see and feel an acceptance of people of all nations and should see a people that are deeply committed to taking the gospel constantly to all people, not just the ones that share their culture, their nationality, or their color of skin.
They were from all nations but was it necessary to have languages from all over the world? It is likely that these Jews from all nations would have all spoken Greek or Aramaic in addition to the native language of where they were born but that is hardly the point. The apostles came out praising God in tongues so that people could understand them in their home language. It is not necessary to assume that they could not have understood them if they spoke in Aramaic. In fact it is likely that when Peter began speaking in verse 14 to preach to the crowd that he did so in Aramaic rather than in other tongues. The gospel was going to go too all nations and people of all languages so just as the crowd was symbolic of that truth, so the fact that the disciples came out praising God in tongues that could be understood by the people of the crowd in their own distinct dialect and language would have been not only a powerful verification that this was from God but would have set a precedent and been a strong symbol of the goal of the gospel. The main point was that the Spirit was not limited by the barrier of language. No language, no national border, no tribe identity, or anything else would stand as a barrier to the spread of the gospel.
The response of some in the crowd was to accuse them of being drunk but this does not mean that they were speaking in unintelligible languages that sounded like nonsense to some in the crowd. Quite the opposite. This was the reverse of the Tower of Babel incident. There the confusion was caused by people not being able to understand all of the languages. Here, however, the confusion was caused by people hearing languages that they did understand. How could these Galileans be capable of such a thing (Galileans were viewed as a bit backwards by the rest of Israel, much the same way that someone from the United States might make jokes about someone from the deep South)? The gift of tongues was apparently the God-given ability to speak in a language that the speaker had never learned. It was primarily used to praise God as a sign to unbeliever (1 Cor. 14:22) not as a private prayer language or some such thing to edify oneself as is often claimed today by those who argue that the gift of tongues is the ability to speak in an unknown language. Thus, if the disciples were coming out early in the morning praising and singing of the wonders of God in languages from all over the known world, that by itself would likely be enough to induce some to accuse them of being drunk. Truly, however, they were filled with the Holy Spirit, not wine (cf. Eph. 5:18).
This all leads to an important thought. At every turn, God’s new family was taking on boundaries. They were pushing the boundaries of nations, tribes, languages, people, and proper behavior through the power and leading of the Spirit. And at every turn, they were criticized, ostracized, and persecuted for it. When is the last time that you and your church did something at the Spirit’s prompting that was even criticized? When is the last time you allowed the Spirit to lead you right past one of those boundaries that human beings are so good at constructing?
Devotional Thought
Do you actively seek to take the gospel beyond your normal comfort zones? Do you personally make attempts to spread the gospel to people of every tribe, language, nation, social status, culture, etc.? That is, after all, what the gospel is all about. What are you waiting for?
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