Acts 2:39

Acts 2:39

The Meaning of the Gift of Tongues

I. What is the truth to which this gift was the index, of which it was the pledge? Consider the narrative in the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, and see whether it does not tell us. On a set of poor men, trained to a mechanical calling, despised by their countrymen, but sharing their contempt for other nations, noted for an uncouth dialect there light cloven tongues as of fire. They have new powers of utterance, men from the province of the Parthian as well as the Roman world hear them proclaiming the wonderful works of God in the language of the lands where they have grown up. Is it a drunken inspiration? Have the orgies of a Dionysiac feast been brought into the Jerusalem worship? No, say the Galilæans, we are the disciples and witnesses of One whom your rulers crucified, whom God has raised from the dead. A great and terrible day of the Lord is at hand. To prepare for such a day, to signify that He whom you rejected as your King is both Lord and Christ, that is poured forth which you see and hear. Repent, therefore, and acknowledge your true King and Lord; be baptized in His name, and you shall receive that gift of the Holy Ghost which we have received.

II. The Spirit of God, teaching of the Father and the Son, leading men out of their narrow notions, can alone guide them into all truth. The missionary, if he is seeking to do his work faithfully, will be brought to confess that God's words are not deceitful words, but words proved in the fire; not words for one age, but words that will last if heaven and earth pass away. But he will come to that discovery because it is the human discovery the Divine discovery which each of us will make for himself if we each seek to be honest in our vocations. We, too, must own that that Spirit is not given to any one of us for any faith or virtues of his own; that it is God's gift to Christ, the Head and Corner-stone of a society which we enter when we abandon our separate selfish pretensions and are content to be heirs of a common blessing.

F. D. Maurice, Sermons,vol. iv., p. 17.

References: Acts 2:39. Contemporary Pulpit,vol. viii., p. 1; J. N. Norton, Golden Truths,p. 264; J. Vaughan, Sermons,14th series, p. 69; Church of England Pulpit,vol. iv., p. 266.