Acts 2:7-8

Acts 2:7

I. There are but two postulates necessary to the faith of Pentecost, or Whitsuntide: the first, God is Almighty; and the second, Christianity is of God. Given these two principles, all is intelligible. The new Gospel was a word, was a message, was a testimony, was a proclamation; these were its names for itself. Therefore it must find a voice and it must get a hearing. It was a failure if it did not. There must be a miracle. Men's eyes and ears must be made cognisant of God's intervention, must be appealed to, as St. Peter appeals to them on this occasion, "He hath shed forth this which ye now see and hear." I know not how else the Gospel could ever have got out of little Palestine; how else the Gospel could ever have gained, in the first instance, the attention of mankind.

II. These Galilæans speak still. Each one of them, being dead, yet speaketh. No philosopher, no poet, no orator, ever spake as they speak. To have written a page in the Bible is to have an immortality of speech. There is no book like it, its enemies themselves being judges. Men feel that the Bible is something to them which none other book is. It has words of eternal life, which must be heard in their integrity, and heard in the birth-tongue. How is this and why? The Spirit of God touched their lips and therefore it is life or death to listen.

III. The Spirit of God is not dead but living. The miracle of Pentecost was a token, was a symbol, was a proclamation of what? Of the advent of the Holy Ghost, in all His fulness, to abide with us for ever. We want still God's Holy Spirit; and still, as in times of old, He lives and works in Christ's Church. Not in the Church as an establishment, as an institution, as an aggregate of humanity or a centre of worship. It is by making the separate stones temples that the Spirit builds into one the great temple. It is by opening to the praying soul the secrets of Scripture, that the Spirit causes these long dead Galilæans to speak and preach to us. By bringing a spiritual ear to the spiritual utterance, so that spiritual things may be interpreted to the spiritual in that which is the common, the unchangeable language of hearts and souls.

C. J. Vaughan, Temple Sermons,p. 35.