Just as Jesus had promised and the Old Testament had foretold, the Holy Spirit of God was poured out from heaven and given to the believers. This occurred fifty days after the resurrection on the Jewish holiday of Pentecost. It was the closing of the old age and the beginning of a new one. A sign accompanied this transition so the Jewish people could recognize this as an event of prophetic fulfillment. A sign was given in order to confirm the presence of God and to cause the people to ask, “What does this mean?”
In Acts 2:1-4 the Holy Spirit manifested as a violent wind to fill the Upper Room where He separated into flames of fire which entered each of the disciples. The result that day was the sign of tongues that “amazed and perplexed” the Jews who asked, “What does this mean?”
For the feast of Pentecost in 30 AD Jerusalem's normal population swelled from 100,000 to 1,000,000 as it often did for Jewish holidays. Jews from many nations and with many native languages filled Jerusalem and the surrounding countryside. When the crowd heard “this sound” they “came together in bewilderment.” Luke uses the words “bewilderment,” “amazed,” and “perplexed” to describe this crowd of Jews who said:
“we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!”
Luke described it this way:
“each one heard them speaking in his own language.”
The Jews were not “bewildered,” “amazed,” and “perplexed” because they heard someone in the streets of Jerusalem speaking a foreign language, since it would be amazing if the Jews did not hear someone in Jerusalem during Pentecost speaking their foreign language.
What amazed the Jews that day was that each individual Jew heard all of the people from the Upper Room speaking his own language. And, so did everyone else! And, they said, “we hear them all declaring the wonders of God in our own language.” So, the miraculous sign was not that the disciples spoke in tongues, but that the Jews heard whatever any of the disciples said in their own language!
There wasn’t a group that spoke Greek gathered around Peter who was speaking Greek while another group that spoke ancient Chaldean gathered around John who was speaking Chaldean. No, instead each individual Jew heard all of the disciples “declaring the wonders of God” in their own language. The Jews said:
“We hear them (or, all of them) declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!”
Then, the purpose of the sign kicked in:
“Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, ‘What does this mean?’”
This was a fulfillment of a prophecy spoken of by Isaiah in 730 BC that had also announce the coming Assyrian invasion of 722 BC, but now it also announced the transition from the Jewish age to the church age on this day in 30 AD. Isaiah had written:
"Very well then, with foreign lips and strange tongues God will speak to this people, to whom he said, 'This is the resting place, let the weary rest' and 'This is the place of repose' - but they would not listen." - Isaiah 28:11-12 (also quoted in 1 Cor. 14:21)
This passage from Isaiah was referred to by Paul in 1 Corinthians when Paul says:
"Tongues, then, are a sign, not for believers but for unbelievers." - 1 Corinthians 14:22
On the day of Pentecost in 30 AD tongues served as a sign to the Jews that they would be set aside and the church would be given the keys of the kingdom as Jesus had said:
"I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven..." - Matthew 16:18-19
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