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OMF.org > Thailand > Resources > Bible studies > Acts 2:1-13

Bible studies

Acts 2:1-13

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• Resources
  • Bible studies
    • Genesis 3
    • Genesis 11:1-9
    • Isaiah 12
    • Matthew 4
    • Matthew 28
    • Mark 4
    • Mark 8
    • Acts 2:1-13
    • Romans 15
    • 1.Corinthians 19-27

Mission and the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:1-13)

Introduction

Edward Lorenz was a physicist working in Massachusetts in the 1960s. Lorenz was developing a computer programme that could determine the probable development of weather systems based on current conditions. As he was inputting data into the system, Lorenz accidentally entered a number and missed out the last three of six decimal places. Although it seemed unlikely that such a negligible discrepancy could make any significant difference to the outcome, Lorenz also entered the correct number anyway to be sure. To his astonishment he discovered that rerunning the programme with the extra three decimal places produced completely different results. A change of little more than a hundred-thousandth led to an entirely new outcome.

As Lorenz was later to explain, it was if something as seemingly insignificant as the beat of a butterfly’s wing in Peking could end up generating a hurricane in New York. Since then, the phrase ‘The Butterfly Effect’ has come to describe the way in which an apparently negligible variable can have a surprisingly vast influence.

In many ways the book of Acts is the New Testament example of the butterfly effect. It starts with Jesus commissioning a small band of followers, who only a few days before had deserted him, to take his message to the ends of the known world (Acts 1:8). We read enthralled as the gospel advances across successive human and geographical borders, so that by the end of Acts it has reached Rome, the capital of the world. Today there are estimated to be around a billion and a half Christians across the globe straddling numerous political and cultural boundaries. What a dozen seemingly insignificant outcasts set about doing 2000 years ago has profoundly altered the history of the world.

The key to this instance of the Butterfly Effect is not the unpredictability of mathematical formulae when applied to the natural world, but the arrival of the Holy Spirit on Earth. Acts 2:1-13 describes this event, in effect the birthday of the church. We see how the Holy Spirit empowers the disciples to inaugurate a new age of world mission, enabling them to respond to two implications of the gospel:

All Nations Must Hear

(1) Look at Acts 1:8. What is to be the purpose of the Holy Spirit?

(2) How does the arrival of the Holy Spirit affect the apostles in Acts 2?

(3) What is the result of the apostles speaking in other languages (11, 41)?

(4) How does this fulfil what Jesus had promised?

With the gift of the Holy Spirit to the church, the rubber really hits the road in bringing God’s plan of blessing all nations (Gen 12:1-4) to fruition. Luke is keen to highlight the cosmopolitan nature of the crowd (‘every nation’, verse 5). The apostles could have simply been given words to say in Greek if the sole purpose of God was that the gospel was understood. What is the significance of the people hearing of God in their own vernacular (or native) dialect? What will happen if the nations don’t hear?

How, then, should the arrival of the Holy Spirit make us view the importance of world mission?

All Christians Must Speak

Peter goes on to explain to the crowd the events they have just witnessed in verses 1-13 by quoting from the Old Testament. The key to understanding what had happened, he says, is to understand what God had promised through the prophet Joel (Acts 2:17-21).

(5) The quotation twice promises that God will give his spirit to his people (‘I will pour out my Spirit’, verses 17 and 18). Joel stresses that the Spirit is going to be a universal gift to all believers. What different kinds of people are mentioned? What social barriers are crossed?

(6) In its broadest sense, prophecy is God making himself known through his word. In the Old Testament this was achieved through selected individuals such as Joel or Isaiah. How does the advent of the Spirit change the availability of God’s word (verses 17b and 18b)?

(7) What does this imply about the responsibility of individual Christians?

(8) What is the most effective way we can respond?

(9) All nations need to hear of Christ, so God has given his Spirit to his people so that we can all play a part in changing the world with the gospel. What, then, will the priorities of a Spirit-filled Christian be? Are these your priorities?

Sam Allberry, 2000