PENTECOST AND GOD'S PROMISE TO ABRAHAM

Tongues and God's Promise to Bless the Gentiles.

In the divine plan of redemption and until the Day of Pentecost, the work of God was largely parochial, limited to and within Israel, the kingdom of priests He sovereignly selected to be His representative people among the international community of nations. God chose Israel to be a mediator between Himself and the Gentile world (Ex. 19:5-6; Ps. 135:4). When Gentiles desired to repent of their idolatry and convert to faith in the God of Israel, in Jehovah the only true God, they needed to become proselytes to the Hebrew faith. Then as proselytes, Judaism allowed them to worship in the Temple precinct though their access was restricted to the Court of the Gentiles. In their worship of Jehovah, Gentiles were segregated from Jews, their outward access to the Lord being restricted. In a tangible way, Jews considered Gentiles "second class" citizens of the kingdom.

But because of an ancient promise that He made to the Gentiles through Abraham, God was bound to abolish those restrictions through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (Eph. 2:11-22). "And in you shall all the families of the earth be blessed" God had said to Abraham, the father of the faithful (Gen. 12:3b). The promised blessing (to "all the families of the earth") came to the Gentiles when God extended it to them on account of the merits of Jesus Christ. Through the "'seed' that is Christ" God included the nations in His direct blessing (compare Gen. 12:3b and Gal. 3:13-16). No longer did Gentiles need to become Jewish proselytes to enter the kingdom of God. They only needed to repent of their sins and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.

Though some aspects of the Abraham's covenant remain unfulfilled to this day, the events of Pentecost marked the commencement of God's long awaited promise to bless the Gentiles. God's sworn kingdom blessing through Israel to the Gentiles awaits future fulfillment. For reason that God promised to bless "all the families of the earth" through Abraham explains why Jesus promised the apostles, "you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth" (Acts 1:8). In the context of God's promise to Abraham and Jesus' prediction of the Spirit's empowerment of the apostles to be His "witnesses . . . to the remotest part of the earth", the purpose of Pentecostal speaking in tongues can I believe, be better appreciated and understood.

The tongues of Pentecost were languages, not ecstatic utterance or gibberish, as some would lead us to believe. The words "other tongues" and "languages" are used interchangeably, the latter giving definition to the former (Acts 2:4, 6, 8, and 11). That Pentecostal morning Diaspora Jews and proselyte Gentiles visiting the temple precinct heard the apostles speak of "the mighty deeds of God" in "other tongues", in the languages of their ethnic nativity (Acts 2:7-11). The speaking of unlearned foreign languages (With a Galilean accent!) caused the international crowd to ask, "And how is it that we each hear them in our own language to which we were born?"

The phenomena of Pentecostal tongues speaking by the apostles thus helped signal that God was extending His spiritual blessing to "all the families of the earth." Through the heralded Gospel of Jesus Christ, Gentiles now fully possessed their share of God's promised blessing through Abraham. As one Bible scholar affirmed, through the various languages spoken by the apostles on Pentecost, "the universality of the Christian faith was by this means supernaturally demonstrated."[1]

With the spread of the gospel, the growth of the church and the uniting of Jews and Gentiles into one body through Holy Spirit baptism (1 Cor. 12:13), God for the time being transitioned His working from Israel to the church until the end of this redemptive era (Rom. 11:25-32). The miracle of the apostolic speaking in "other tongues" served public notice of God's sanction of that transition.

By Pastor Larry DeBruyn

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[1] Donald Guthrie, The Apostles (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1975) 25.