The Day of Pentecost in the book of Acts was a very significant event in the life of the early church. This is the day that Christians celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit. This is also considered as the birth of the Christian church. We celebrate this event 50 days after Resurrection Sunday.
What happened to the disciples when they were filled by the Holy Spirit?
First, the disciples began to speak other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
What did they speak? Was this language gibberish? No. The disciples spoke in other languages. Acts 2:9 to 11 tells us that they spoke the language of the Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, parts of Libya near Cyrene, Rome, and those of Cretans and Arabs. The disciples of Jesus declared the wonders of God in these tongues!
The message for us then is that the Holy Spirit will enable us to contextualize the message of Jesus in the part of the world where we are in.
Second, the disciples were emboldened to preach the Gospel to many people.
During the public ministry of Jesus, we can see in the Gospels that the disciples were mainly part of the crowd. They would oftentimes ask a lot of questions. But this time, a fisherman by the name of Peter stood up courageously and preached.
One can probably imagine a Rabbi to preach to a large crowd because he was trained to do that. But a fisherman was not heard of to do that. The Holy Spirit empowered Peter to speak and it resulted in 3,000 people accepting Jesus Christ and were subsequently baptized.
We, too, can speak boldly and without fear when we are empowered by the Holy Spirit.
Third, when the Holy Spirit was breathed into the disciples, they continued the ministry of Jesus that gives life.
Right from the start in Genesis 2:7, we can see that when God breathed the breath of life, man became a living being. In John 20:22 Jesus breathed on the disciples also. Later, Paul wrote in 2 Timothy 3:16 that “All Scripture is God-breathed…” Taking all of these, we can see that God wants us to have a meaningful life, and to fight anything that brings about death.
As the Holy Spirit is breathed into us, we involve ourselves in ministries that give life.
Rev. Francis Neil G. Jalando-on