Living Waters Church | October 26, 2025
Acts 2.5-13
Listen to this sermon here.
This past September a gathering was held high in the Andes Mountain range of Peru. Everyone in the area had been invited for what was a highly anticipated and meaningful celebration. Not a wedding, a harvest festival, or a birthday party, but a book launch. And a book presented not in Spanish or English, but in the locals’ own native tongue, a dialect of the Quechua (Ketch-oo-wah) language. Spoken since the time of the ancient Incan Empire, Quechua remains an indigenous language still spoken by many Peruvians today.
The book presented was thick and strange, filled with stories from long ago about people in far off places. You and I might have several of these books sitting on our shelves at home, but not these villagers. Until just a few weeks ago, they didn’t have this book in their language. Now, because of the hard work of a many people over many years, these folks could hold in their hands a Bible in their own tongue. It had taken local and international translators 17 years to complete the project, and it’s estimated that the translation could reach 500,000 first language speakers.
Needless to say, it was an exciting day. During the ceremony the translators present picked up on some of the comments from the villagers. One remarked, “It’s amazing that people would travel so far to be with us. No one has ever come to us and cared about us. This is really encouraging.” Another, hearing a little of Jesus, wondered out loud, “Does Jesus speak Quechua?” Those who had worked to translate the Bible into Quechua would be able to answer that question emphatically – yes, Jesus did in fact speak Quechua.
I share that story by way of our friend Jon Imbeau who serves with Wycliffe Canada, a group working to translate the Bible into every language on earth. In September Jon traveled to Peru for that book launch, where the Bible was presented to folks who are in many ways just like you and me. Folks wondering if they mattered, if anyone knew about them or cared. And just a few Sundays ago those folks heard, clear as I am speaking to you now, that God cared and God spoke their language. Jon was able to share the gospel during that same gathering, and his message was clear: Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved! And you have to wonder, because they could hear and read the gospel in their own language, maybe those villagers believed him.
I share that story because we’ve arrived in chapter two as we make our way through the Book of Acts. Acts 2 is what you could call ground zero of the global Jesus movement. It’s a pivotal moment early in the book, where we not only hear about the sending of the Holy Spirit, but also of the result – peoples of all places and tongues alerted to the fact that Jesus had forever changed things. As we’ll see, at the birth of what we now call the church, we don’t meet a purely homogenous group, we meet people drawn from everywhere. And it’s important and encouraging to hear that people are still being drawn from everywhere. This is what the gospel and the sending of the Holy Spirit is all about. But before we come to that, a brief recap.
As we’ve been learning, Acts is a record of the movement Jesus began in the gospels, the spread of his good news of great joy for all people. After his death and resurrection, Jesus gathered his disciples and told them to wait for the arrival of the Holy Spirit, who would give them the power to share about him. They couldn’t move until God moved, and so recently we’ve seen the disciples waiting. Then, as they waited, dramatically the sound of a violent wind filled the space they were gathered and something like flames of fire settled on each of their heads. We’re told that everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirt, just as Jesus had promised, and they began to speak in languages they couldn’t previously.
Last week, we looked at two of the signs which accompanied the arrival of the Holy Spirit on the first believers: wind and fire. We traced the origins of those signs deep into the Old Testament. As far back as Genesis 1 we heard what wind or breath represented, the life-giving presence of God, and noted even Jesus’ himself utilizing this same imagery for the Spirit. And we heard about fire, which again represented God’s presence and leading in moments like Moses’ encounter with a burning bush and a number of other examples. So, when we hear about wind and fire as signs in Acts, those signs point us to what historically has represented God’s presence, movement, direction and creative work.
It’s important for us to hear how pivotal, how truly world changing this moment is in our history and in our Scriptures. We might think of Jesus’s death or his resurrection as the most important moments in the New Testament, but we can also make a strong case for this moment being equally significant. The Holy Spirit being sent on the first believers was the long-promised sending of God’s Spirit to his people, not in a centralized temple, but now on anyone devoted to Jesus. We’re learning that Jesus is no less present in the book of Acts than he is in the Gospels, and in some ways more present. Jesus is still the main character, he is simply alive and working by his Spirit through the lives of those sent and sharing his gospel. This is the moment God’s presence fills and empowers those first followers of Jesus. And there would be turning back, God’s new life had again been breathed onto his creation, animating the new creation kingdom made possible through Jesus’ death and resurrection.
As mentioned, last week we focused on the first two signs mentioned: wind and fire. There was, however, a third sign. If the first two signs signified God’s Spirit baptizing and filling the first believers, the third sign signified the purpose for that baptism – they began to speak in other languages they couldn’t previously speak. The question arising from our text today is: what languages and why?
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.
Let’s take a moment to touch on what was going on in Jerusalem the day the Spirit arrived. Luke tells us earlier that this event happened during the Pentecost festival, so the event we now call The Day of Pentecost is rooted in a longer story. Pentecost was a Jewish feast, a harvest festival, also commemorating the giving of the Law (or the Ten Commandments) by Moses on Mount Sinai after the Exodus from Egypt. As Pentecost was an key festival, the city was full of commuters. It’s important to know that Judea was not the only place Jewish people lived in the ancient world. Jewish folks had spread out all over place, often speaking the language of those places, and to some degree adopting the customs. However, many would travel to Jerusalem when they could for important feasts. Along with these folks, others (non-Jews, or gentiles) had been attracted by what Judaism had to offer, and had chosen to worship alongside, even if they weren’t Israelite by birth, also gathering in the city for the festivals.
So, during the feast of Pentecost, just as with Passover fifty days prior, Jerusalem was bursting at the seams with people from all over. Some of these folks, from “every nation” according to Acts, heard the sounds of something strange happening that day (and I meal literally hear), so a large crowd forms.
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, 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!”
The drawn together crowd are bewildered to hear all those filled with the Holy Spirit speaking in their various languages. This was odd stuff, since all those speaking, those first followers of Jesus, hailed from Galilee (about 130kms from Jerusalem itself). Folks from Galilee wouldn’t know how to speak many of the far flung languages the festival travelers were hearing with their own ears. When and how did these backwater Galileans learn all our languages? That’s the very question the crowd asked on that Pentecost day. The answer was the Spirit.
Luke, the writer, is telling us that it was on this day, the feast of Pentecost, when God himself gave the presence of his Spirit in abundance and for a purpose. The language of the Law in Exodus may have been important, given to one people at one time, but now a new thing was being announced to the Israelite tribes being re-gathered to hear the new message. God’s people themselves had become temples of his presence, and God’s people could be unified under Jesus the Messiah. All this action caused such a commotion and was so unexpected that throughout the passage we read words like bewildered, amazed and perplexed. Something new and yet long waited for was happening the likes no one had seen or heard of before. People from all over were hearing the believers speak in languages they couldn’t possibly have known prior. And not only speak, but “declaring the wonders of God.”
Do you recall earlier in Acts 1 when Jesus said his disciples would be his witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth? The evidence of that promise just a few days earlier was already playing out rapidly. You have to wonder if Jesus’ disciples assumed their sharing about Jesus “to the ends of the earth”, was something they would have to travel to accomplish. Though some of them did end up traveling, going, it began with God drawing. It’s a reminder that what we call “missions work”, maybe assuming that’s something which happens over there, is very naturally something which happens here. Our here is just someone else’s’ there, and visa versa. We’re localized and socialized to our surroundings, but God is not. All “global work” is “local work” to God. And when we think about global peoples and many languages, if we’re familiar we might recall the story of the tower of Bable in Genesis 11, where the people were divided and scattered into many languages. In this moment in Acts, we see something of a renewal. Now, through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit there would be a unity of message which came through the diversity languages. There could be a re-unification because of and under Jesus, even in the realities of diversity. This was totally new.
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.”
I have to confess that this is one of my favourite couple of verses in the Bible. And that’s because we often approach Scripture as though it didn’t happen in the real world. And here is where approaches like that are dismantled. After being drawn by the sound, and hearing the many languages pouring out, maybe from equally surprised speakers, some in the crowd chalked up this behaviour to what they usually chalked strange behaviour up to: too much merlot (it was festival time after all). We don’t know what’s going on, so let’s just say they’re drunk (even though is that doesn’t explain things). Others, however, have a genuine question: “What does this mean?” And that same question is as relevant now as it was then.
What does it mean?
We’ll hear very clearly what it means in the next couple of weeks, when we turn our attention to Peter’s address of the gathered crowd. And I want to encourage you to join us the next two weeks, because both Kirsten and Rikk will walk is through this first crucial speech in Acts. But what could we say it means for our purposes of refection today?
It means, that at the very start of the Jesus movement, everyone was getting in on the ground level. And though it’s true the gospel had yet to spread directly to gentile peoples (non-Jews) as it would do shortly, the languages represented point to a vast spread of the gospel everywhere. God was calling and gathering his far-flung people together under Jesus, and many more peoples, nations, languages were the horizon. Hearing the Jesus message was merely a geographical technicality and chronological eventuality. The gospel would spread rapidly from this moment on.
What else does it mean? Well, I think it also means that Jesus speaks Quechua. It means that Jesus speaks Mandrin. It means Jesus speaks Thai. It means Jesus speaks Arabic and Russian and Hindi and Swahili. It means Jesus speak hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ (Hun’qumi’num), the dialect of our local Kwantlen neighbours. And if the gospel is meant to be heard all in these languages, if God cares to ensure all peoples can hear, God must care about all people.
So if you ever hear that being a believer in Jesus means adopting some white Saviour colonial dogma, remember what happened on day of Pentecost. Because Jesus does not first belong to me, and he doesn’t first belong to you. Jesus belongs to all of us, equally. Jesus made that possible through his death, resurrection and the sending of his Holy Spirit. As we’ll see as Acts soon, all peoples will be gathered in and under Jesus’ name. And it won’t be on the basis of their Jewish or gentile roots, or their sex, or their social status. It’ll be on the basis of Jesus himself, no matter our background or language.
What else does it mean? It means that all the people we live among today wondering if they matter, and if anyone will ever care enough to visit with or speak to them, Jesus is for them too. Last week we launched Alpha in the heart of the Willoughby neighborhood. Why? Because God cares about the people living in Willoughby, and they need to hear, just as we’ve heard, just as those folks living high in the Andes of Peru are hearing. They need to hear that God speaks their language, and God cares. Unlike our friend Jon, we probably find yourself in Peru this next week. But we will likely find yourself surrounded by all kinds of people. Remember that God speaks their language, and that he cares, wanting to gathered all people to himself in Jesus’ name. What else does it mean? Well, it means God speaks your language too, and he cares enough that you hear also.
Luke Knight 