The Wonderful Works of God Spoken in Our Tongue

Rev. H. den Hollander, Fort MacLeod, AB

In these words we read an exclamation. Among this people was amazement. Truly something extraordinary was taking place! Many providential dealings of the Lord in this world we consider to be common, but what took place on the day of Pentecost was far from common. To the apostles the Lord gave the immediate and extraordinary gift of speaking in other tongues.

What was the purpose of this extraordinary gift? Ever since man’s Fall, he abuses God’s gifts. Even with those gifts which he receives directly from the Lord he glorifies and honors himself, but this was certainly not the Lord’s purpose. Sometimes also today we hear of “speaking in tongues,” but no one is able to understand what is being spoken. Paul condemns this. Why? Because it is not to “edification.” “For if I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit prayeth, but my understanding is unfruitful. What is it then? I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also... Else when thou shalt bless with the spirit, how shall he that occupieth the room of the unlearned say Amen at thy giving of thanks, seeing he understandeth not what thou sayest? For thou verily givest thanks well, but the other is not edified” (1 Corinthians 14:14-17). Therefore Paul concludes, “Yet in the church I had rather speak five words with my understanding, that by my voice I might teach others also, than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue.”

The purpose of the Holy Spirit in giving the gift of tongues to the apostles on the day of Pentecost was exactly the opposite of speaking in unknown tongues. It was that they might speak in known tongues. It was not to conceal their message but to reveal it. It was not that they would not be understood but that they might be understood. Nor was the purpose even to place the gift of tongues itself in the foreground but the message spoken by the use of this gift.

“We do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God.” The Holy Spirit did not give this gift for the purpose of speaking about sensual and carnal things. It was a gift given to proclaim spiritual realities. How is it with us, my friends? Indeed, as we look about us, there are many wonderful works of God to be seen in the Creation. Many of these are spoken of also in God’s Word, in which there is also much instruction concerning natural things, but this is not the primary purpose of God’s Word, and if this is all we “hear” when we sit under the preaching Sabbath after Sabbath, then we have not yet heard the most essential part. We have not heard what the Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judaea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia heard when they exclaimed, “We do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God.”

What more wonderful works of God are to be heard than those concerning the salvation of a poor, lost soul? Is there any work that may be compared to this work, already in its conception from eternity? “For who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been His counselor?” Does it lie within the capacity of a guilty, fallen creature to conceive how God could magnify His blessed attributes of mercy and grace in him at the same time as His holiness, righteousness, and justice?

Moreover, is this not a most wonderful work of God in the meriting of that salvation? Is it possible for a wretched and poor sinner to fully perceive the greatness of the love of God to him in “sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, that He might condemn sin in the flesh”? Are there words for a condemned Barabbas to express the wonder of God’s work of substitution? Is it not experienced to be a wonderful work of God to “destroy, through death,” him that is experienced to “have the power of death”?

“We do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God.” God’s Church will not only wonder at the works of God in the decreeing and meriting of salvation but also in the application of it. Did not Israel wonder at the works of God when they stood on the other side of the sea and saw their most feared enemies dead upon the sea shore? Did they not experience, in the midst of their own insufficiency, His wonderful works in providing bread and water in the wilderness? Is there not a people that may even acknowledge at times already here below with the psalmist, “It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn Thy statutes”? Will this people not sing to all eternity of the wonderful works of God when they shall behold them in their fullness?

“We do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God.” What was such a wonder to this multitude? It was hearing of these wonderful works of God in their own tongue. This had never been before; this was new. Previously, it was spoken in a tongue they little understood, but now it is to them so very plain and clear. At this they marveled.

Have you also ever so marveled, dear reader? By nature we perform our religious duties out of form and custom. Perhaps when we hear the preaching we say it is actually in a language we so little understand, but if the Lord comes in our life, then we marvel at how different the language becomes. Yes, suddenly we begin to “hear it in our own tongue.” Perhaps we say the minister has changed lately. He preaches much simpler now, but that is not true. Indeed, on the day of Pentecost it was so; the miracle was in the preaching. That was extraordinary; it was the gift of tongues. However, in the ordinary working of the Holy Spirit, the miracle is in the hearing, in the receiving. Then with Lydia we begin to attend to the things that are spoken by God’s servants. We not only begin to hear the wonderful works of God, but we begin to experience them in our own heart, the work of the Holy Spirit pricking our heart unto true repentance so that we begin to cry out with this multitude, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?”

“We do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God,” but does not Paul ask that most pertinent question, “How shall they hear, without a preacher?” Ah, on the day of Pentecost the apostles were qualified for the labors the Lord had called them to perform. No, they did not have to do this themselves; it was all given from above; therefore, the multitude was so “amazed and marveled, saying one to another, Behold, are not all these which speak Galileans? And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born?” May the Lord be pleased to continue to qualify such simple fishermen in our days, in our own denomination, that lost sinners who are yet strangers of the language of Canaan may hear “the wonderful works of God in their own tongue,” by the operation of the Holy Spirit to the eternal salvation of their souls.

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