And the Crowd Goes Wild - Acts 2:1-13

And The Crowd Goes Wild

And the crowd goes wild. I don’t know how many times I heard that as a kid… somebody was always saying it in our pickup games, whether it was baseball or basketball. “He hits a home run… and the crowd goes wild”. “He shoots… he scores… and the crowd goes wild.” Kids dreaming about those big moments.

Here's what's interesting about that phrase. It's not really about the crowd. It's about the moment. Something happened. Something big. Something to celebrate… and it’s almost a natural response and reaction when you’re witness to something spectacular. Acts 2 is one of those moments.

Fifty days after Easter. Ten days after Jesus ascended to the right hand of the Father. One hundred and twenty people in a house in Jerusalem. And something big goes down. There’s a big noise… and pretty soon a crowd gathers.. And the crowd went wild.

Three times we have reference to a human reaction here in what we just read:

The crowd was:

confused astounded and amazed astounded and perplexed

Add this to the sound that was like a violent rushing wind, and multiple languages being spoken and you have one noisy scene. The crowd was going wild.… and it fits the occasion. One of the biggest events in all of human history. And like everything else about the life of Jesus… his birth, his teaching, his miracles, his resurrection… there is reason for amazement and being astounded and even confused. There are some things we’re going to say about Pentecost this morning. But before we do… we have to state the obvious about what occurred that day:

The Spirit came down

The Spirit came down… from heaven. That's it. That's what happened. Heaven opened and God kept His word. The calendar matters here. This is fifty days after Passover — the Passover during which Jesus was crucified. That's where the word comes from. Pentecost. Pente. Fifty. The Feast of Weeks, they called it — a festival at the end of seven weeks of harvest, a celebration that the grain was in and God had provided.

Jews from everywhere — from every corner of the Roman Empire, made the trip to Jerusalem. The city swelled. The population multiplied. This particular Pentecost was fifty days after the crucifixion. It was also, by Luke's own account, somewhere between a week and ten days after Jesus ascended to the right hand of the Father. The disciples had been waiting in Jerusalem exactly that long.

Jesus had told them to wait — not because nothing was coming, but because something was. "You will receive power," He said, "when the Holy Spirit has come on you." Joel had said it centuries earlier: I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh. The Father had promised it. The Son had guaranteed it. And on the morning of Pentecost, with one hundred and twenty people in a house doing nothing more dramatic than waiting — Jesus delivered on his promise.

Everything else in this passage — the wind, the fire, the languages, the crowd, the confusion, the question — everything is the aftermath of that one fact. The reason the crowd is going wild is the arrival of the Holy Spirit. God showed up.

But then we also need to state the other obvious thing happening here:

The Spirit came from above

The Spirit came from above, uninvited by human effort.

Acts 2:2 Suddenly a sound like that of a violent rushing wind came from heaven

We will get to the sound in a second, but don’t miss what Dr. Luke is saying… whatever is happening in that moment is from the very place where Jesus is… from heaven. And once again what we have is another event in which the very glory presence of heaven is intruding into time and space. Here’s how Dr. Luke describes it:

A violent rushing sound + flames of fire

If you’re the congregation hearing this for the first time, your hair stands up. You’ve seen this before in your Old Testament. When God was present with Israel at Mount Sinai after they went through the Red Sea, he made himself present and known with thundering violent sounds and a blazing fire on top of the mountain. And now here, one week after Jesus ascends into the glory of heaven, the glory of heaven is back again, only this time it is to be seen and heard by everybody in a majestic way.

And it’s coming from heaven. When Jesus gives the gift of the Holy Spirit, there is no ascent to heaven to get him. Once again, God is descending from heaven to earth because we cannot climb to heaven. Heaven must come to us. And it does, in the arrival of the Holy Spirit.

Why Pentecost?

So… the question for today becomes… why bother with this day? Why is this on the church calendar? There are some days on the church calendar that people understand right away. Christmas? We get that. Jesus is born. Angels sing. Shepherds run. Good Friday? We get that too. Jesus is crucified. The Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world. Easter? Absolutely. Christ is risen. The grave is empty. Death loses. Jesus wins.

But Pentecost? That one can feel a little strange. There is wind. There is fire. There are languages. There are people asking questions. So… Why do we make a big deal about it?

Pentecost is the birthday of the Church.

Pentecost is the birthday of the Church. The church started then. We do not mean God had no people before Acts 2. Of course He did. All the believers in the Old Testament. All the prophets… part of the church that was participating in redemptive history through faith. And we don’t mean there was no Holy Spirit before then. The Spirit was always at work.

But Acts 2 is still something new. At Pentecost, the crucified, risen, and ascended Jesus pours out the Holy Spirit from heaven, and the Church is born as the Spirit-filled, Christ-confessing, apostolic, Gospel-preaching, mission-sent people of God. That is different. That is new. That is redemptive history turning a major corner. Before Acts 2, no one would have looked at a synagogue and said, “There is the Church of the crucified and risen Messiah Jesus, baptized in His name, gathered around the apostles’ teaching and the sacraments. After Acts 2, that is exactly what the Church is.

Pentecost tells us the Church is not self-made

Pentecost tells us the Church does not begin with us. The Church is not self-created. The Church is not a volunteer organization. The Church is not a spiritual club formed by people who like each other, like the same things, even believe the same things. The Church comes from heaven.

Same verse...

Acts 2:2 Suddenly a sound like that of a violent rushing wind came from heaven, and it filled the whole house where they were staying.

120 people, many of whom had been with Jesus for all 3 years of his teaching ministry were in that room and they become the launchpad for the birth of the church. But make no mistake, this isn’t something they concocted. This is from heaven. That phrase is huge. The Son has ascended into heaven. Now the Spirit descends from heaven. Jesus goes up. The Spirit comes down. This is all God’s doing. The exalted Christ pours out the promised Spirit. Pentecost is not Jesus leaving and the Church taking over. Pentecost is Jesus ruling and reigning and acting from heaven. That is why Pentecost defines the Church as a divine movement, not a merely human institution.

The church does not run on human energy. It was not founded by impressive people who got inspired and organized themselves into a movement. It was not started by the right vision statement or the right leadership team or the right outreach strategy. One hundred and twenty frightened, confused, ordinary people were sitting in a house — and God showed up. That's the church. That's what the church is. Not a human institution that talks about God. A community that God breathed into existence from the outside.

This matters for The Table. We did not plant this church. God planted this church. We showed up. God breathed. That's the order. And that means when it's hard — and church planting in the Rio Grande Valley is sometimes very hard — the question is not "can we sustain this?" The question is "will we keep receiving what God keeps giving?"

This is where I want to say something because we can get so messed up. Yes, the church has institutional forms. And yes, we’re meeting here… we have friends who are meeting over there and over there because we don’t believe all the same things. And then there are budgets. There are meetings. There are schedules. There is a pastor and leadership team and volunteers and chairs and coffee and a building with a long whiteboard list. Yes, the Church on earth has lots of institutional stuff. But what Pentecost is saying and what we’re seeing in Acts 2 is that the church is not merely an institution. Her life does not come from bylaws. Her life does not come from good feelings about a place. Her life does not come from marketing. Her life does not come from how excited we are. Her life comes from the ascended Jesus, who sends the Holy Spirit. The Church is divine in origin because she is created by Christ’s Word and Spirit.

And that is good news for wounded people. Because it means the deepest truth about the Church is not the sin of the people who hurt you. The deepest truth about the Church is the faithfulness of Jesus, the One who gathers you. The Church belongs to Jesus, not any pastor, denomination, non-profit board, donors or members. The Church is not theirs. The Church is not mine. The Church is not yours. The Church is Christ’s. He bought her with His blood. He fills her with His Spirit. He gives her His Word. He washes her in Baptism. He feeds her at His Table. He sends her into the world. So if the Church has hurt you, Pentecost does not minimize that pain. But Pentecost does say: look higher. Look past the bad actor. Look past the failed leader. Look past the religious wound. Look to the ascended Christ, who still gathers sinners by His Spirit.

Pentecost creates a new family

That crowd outside the house that hear’s this roar, this loud noise, is not random. Luke names the nations

Acts 2:9–11 “Parthians, Medes, Elamites; those who live in Mesopotamia, in Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts), Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the magnificent acts of God in our own tongues.”

That list there is a list of the known world. Every direction. North, south, east, west. Every language. And every single one of them is hearing the same thing — in their own native language — from people who have no business speaking it.

Dr. Luke also tells us what they are hearing… "The magnificent acts of God." The great saving acts. The story of Jesus. The story of what God has done in history to rescue human beings from sin, death, and the devil. In their own language. Not in the language of the religious professionals. Not in the language of the people with the most credentials or the longest religious résumés. In Parthian. In Arabic. In Latin. In the heart-language of people who had traveled hundreds of miles to Jerusalem for a festival and walked into something they could not have anticipated.

And that has everything to do with us. Because we are here in a church in San Benito, Texas. In the Rio Grande Valley. Where some of us think in Spanish and pray in Spanish and dream in Spanish. Where some of us live in the hyphen — English and Spanish and Spanglish all mixed together. But it’s even more than that. For many of us, church is a place where we are expected to become a different kind of person before Jesus would have anything to do with us. Like we need to clean up our language and our background and our history before we could walk through the door.

Pentecost says: No. The Spirit did not make everyone speak Galilean. He made Galileans speak everyone else's language. God doesn’t erase backgrounds, he descends into it. Our history, our culture, our stories. The Gosepl, the magnificent acts of God.. who Jesus is and what He has done for us… that becomes our common language. It’s the Gospel that makes the Table what it is.

Pentecost says the church exists for the world

The Spirit comes. And the church immediately opens its mouth. The 120 in that room start talking. They are speaking the Gospel.. God’s magnificent acts in Jesus. Jesus crucified. Jesus risen. Jesus exalted. This is the launch of the church's mission. To the world. That list of nations isn’t simply about a new family. It’s about the world. The church’s mission was never supposed to be just internal. The church does not exist to be a comfortable gathering of people who already believe similar things, or an echo chamber. There is a place for Bible education and discipleship and learning all about what the Bible says… the entire Jesus story. But it doesn’t stay here. The church exists for the people standing outside wondering what's happening inside those doors out front.

The church exists for the crowd. For the nations. For the people who hear something they cannot explain and ask: "What does this mean?" The church exists for the world. Outreach and mission isn’t a church growth program that the Table uses to get more people. It is that. But that was and is what the church has been from the very beginning. The Spirit comes, the church opens its mouth, and the first people to hear what the Spirit produces are the outsiders. The diaspora crowd who traveled to Jerusalem and walked into something that would change their lives forever.

Every time we gather at The Table — Sunday morning, Jesus and Tacos on Wednesday, whenever we are together around Word and bread and wine — we are not gathering for ourselves. We are gathering so we can be sent. To our neighbors. To San Benito. To the RGV to the world. This is why we talk about more Jesus in more of where we live, learn, work, and play. We don’t keep this to ourselves. It’s for whoever is in our circles of influence.

And The Crowd goes Wild.. with the Gospel

The sound that stopped the the crowd that day on their morning commute, that made them lose their composure, that produced the only honest question available — that sound had a name. It was the Spirit of the risen, ascended, reigning Jesus Christ, poured out because He made it to the throne and kept every promise He ever made. The crowd went wild because heaven opened. And heaven opened because the cross worked.

That's the mission we have been handed. The rest of the book of Acts is the crowd going wild with the Gospel because of what happened that day. The Spirit’s descent energized more than 3000 people that day. And before the book of Acts ends, the Gospel has absolutely gone wild… to the ends of the earth. And all around us are people asking the same question the crowd that day was asking: What does this mean?

We get to be the answer to that question. Not because we are impressive. Not because we have it together. Because the same Spirit who came through the walls to find us is the one who sends us back out. The crowd is going wild… they want to know. The Gospel is going wild.. because Jesus is the Good News they need. That’s the story of Pentecost. On this Pentecost Sunday, let’s pray that Jesus uses The Table through His Spirit to bring the Good News to others, even this week.

Let’s Pray

The Table

This is Jesus going absolutely wild for you, right now, in bread and wine. The same Spirit who came through the walls to find a crowd on a Tuesday morning in Jerusalem — He is here. The same Gospel that went wild to the ends of the earth — it lands here. On your tongue. In your body. For you. Every nation. Every language. The body of Christ, given for you. The blood of Christ, shed for you. Pentecost made real. Pentecost lands right here at this meal. Through The Word, Jesus gives us His Spirit. And it is here that the Holy Spirit bears witness to the death of Jesus FOR YOU. Every time we come to this Table, it is Pentecost being made real for us in His Body and in His Blood through The Holy Spirit. Come and receive Jesus going wild FOR YOU.

Benediction