1And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. 2And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. 3And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. 4And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. 5And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven. 6Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language. 7And they were all amazed and marvelled, saying one to another, Behold, are not all these which speak Galilaeans? 8And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born? 9Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judaea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, 10Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, 11Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God. 12And they were all amazed, and were in doubt, saying one to another, What meaneth this? 13Others mocking said, These men are full of new wine. 14But Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and said unto them, Ye men of Judaea, and all that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto you, and hearken to my words: 15For these are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is the third hour of the day. 16But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel; 17And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: 18And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy: 19And I will shew wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath; blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke: 20The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before that great and notable day of the Lord come: 21And it shall come to pass, whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Pentecost’s first headline miracle is that outsiders can actually understand Galileans. Jerusalem is crowded with Jews who live all over the map, and their daily lives have trained their ears to hear God in different tongues. The sign meets them right there, in the open, where it can be checked by anyone standing close enough to listen. Luke says “every man heard them speak” in his own language, and the crowd can even name what they are hearing: “the wonderful works of God.” That matters because it keeps the event from shrinking into a private thrill for the inner circle. People overhear it, argue about it, and try to explain it away. The old shadow behind the scene is Babel, where speech became a wall and people scattered. Here, the Spirit does not flatten cultures into one sacred dialect. He makes one message travel across the differences so real people can understand it.
But the same scene is easy to treat as harmless spectacle. Some are amazed, some are baffled, some mock. If you want, you can chalk it up to religious noise and keep moving. Peter will not let the crowd keep that distance. He takes the languages and the commotion and handles them like evidence in public. His point is not that the disciples have discovered a new spiritual trick. His point is that God raised Jesus, the apostles are witnesses, and the risen Jesus is the one doing this. Then he drops a phrase that pins the moment to the ground: “which ye now see and hear.” Pentecost is not an invisible mood, it is an event you can point to, and Peter insists it has a single explanation. Jesus has been exalted, and this outpouring is what his rule looks like in the streets. So the sermon tightens. The crowd is no longer watching something weird, they are being told that the man they rejected is “both Lord and Christ.” The sign that seemed to offer them entertainment starts to read like a verdict, and they are standing in the courtroom.