Reunion WeekendSample

Speak The Language Of The Heart

We have talked about the timing of the Lord from Passover to Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit. In Acts 2:5–13, we will see the language in which God is going to speak His miraculous acts. “There were Jews living in Jerusalem, devout men from every nation under heaven. When this sound occurred, a crowd came together and was confused because each one heard them speaking in his own language. And they were astounded and amazed, saying, “Look, aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? How is it that each of us can hear in our own native language? 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 proselytes, Cretans, and Arabs—we hear them speaking the magnificent acts of God in our own languages.” They were all astounded and perplexed, saying to one another, “What could this be?” But some sneered and said, “They’re full of new wine!”

God has a word He wants to speak to us, using the language of our heart. These people were able to hear their own language. Have you ever been to a foreign land and, all of a sudden, somebody begins to speak English to you? And you think to yourself, “Oh, the language of my heart.” There is something that happens in your heart when you hear your native tongue. Here the people heard the magnificent acts of God being spoken in the language of their hearts. There were people from every nation coming together, each of them hearing about the acts of God in their own language, so that they could go back home and talk about them to their friends and families all over the world. 

We need to learn to speak the language of the heart to ourselves and to others. At Pentecost, Jews and God-fearers from all over came to Jerusalem to meet at the temple. With the birth of the Church, God was declaring that true religion was never about coming to Jerusalem; it was always about going out to the world. It was and is about the Gospel being able to go out and reach people from every nation.

What mattered was not coming to a certain place, to a certain room; it was going out to the world. What happened in Acts 2 was the reversal of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11, when human beings thought they could be like God and began to build a tower to reach the sky. God said then, “I am going to confuse your languages.” On Pentecost, God said, “Worship me, and I will let you hear the good news of salvation in all your languages. Then I will send you out to the world to speak in your native tongue to declare the truth about the magnificent things I do.”