Outlive Your Life_ You Were Made to Make a Difference - Max Lucado [10]
Clamshells. We come by them honestly. We don’t intend to retreat from the world or stick our heads in a hole. We want to help. But the problems are immense (Did you say one billion are poor?), complex (When is helping actually hurting?), and intense (I have enough problems of my own.).
That’s true. We do have our own issues. Our sputtering marriages, fading ambitions, dwindling bank accounts, and stubborn hearts. How can we change the world when we can’t even change our bad habits? We don’t have what it takes to solve these problems. Best to climb in and shut the shell, right?
You would have had a hard time selling that strategy to the Jerusalem church. Not after God unshelled them on the Day of Pentecost.
Pentecost was the busiest day of the year in Jerusalem—one of three feast days that all Jewish men, at some point in their lifetimes, were required to appear in the city. They traveled from Europe, Asia, and Africa. It’s difficult to know the population of ancient cities, but some suggest that during this season Jerusalem swelled from a hundred thousand to a million inhabitants.1 Her narrow streets ran thick with people of all shades of skin, from Ethiopian ebony to Roman olive. A dozen dialects bounced off the stone walls, and the temple treasury overflowed with every coin and currency.
Then there were the locals. The butcher and his meat. The wool comber and his loom. The shoemaker, hammering sandals. The tailor, plying his needle. White-robed priests and unsightly beggars. Every element of humanity crammed within the three hundred acres of the City of David.2
And somewhere in their midst, Jesus’ followers were gathered in prayer. “When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place” (Acts 2:1). This is the earliest appearance of the church. Consider where God placed his people. Not isolated in a desert or quarantined in a bunker. Not separated from society, but smack-dab in the center of it, in the heart of one of the largest cities at its busiest time. And then, once he had them where he needed them . . .
Suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. (vv. 2–4)
The Holy Spirit came upon them suddenly—not predictably or expectedly or customarily but suddenly. Welcome to the world of Acts and the “sudden” Spirit of God, sovereign and free, never subordinate to timing or technique. He creates his own agenda, determines his own calendar, and keeps his own hours.
Fire and wind now. House shaking later. Visiting the Samaritans after water baptism. Falling on the Gentiles before water baptism. And here, roaring like a tornado through Jerusalem. “[The sound] filled the whole house” (v. 2) and spilled into the streets. The whistling, rushing, blowing sound of a wind.
The Spirit came, first as wind, then appeared as individual tongues of fire, “and one sat upon each of them” (v. 3). This wasn’t one torch over the entire room but individual flames hovering above each person.
And then the most unexpected thing happened.
[They] began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.
And there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men, from every nation under heaven. And when this sound occurred, the multitude came together, and were confused, because everyone heard them speak in his own language. Then they were all amazed and marveled, saying to one another, “Look, are not all these who speak Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each in our own language in which we were born? Parthians and Medes and Elamites, those dwelling in Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia