Great Balls Of Fire

What looked like flames or tongues of fire appeared and settled on each of them.   Acts 2:3

Try to imagine yourself among the 120 people when this happened. What they saw at first must have looked absolutely terrifying. A great ball or pillar of fire was coming right toward them. The astonishing thing was that none of them was burned.

Where have we come across a fire that rested on something but did not burn it up? In the story of Moses and the burning bush: “The angel of the LORD appeared to him in a blazing fire from the middle of a bush. Moses stared in amazement. Though the bush was engulfed in flames, it didn’t burn up” (Exodus 3:2). Then God told Moses, “I AM WHO I AM,” and Moses realized he was in the immediate presence of God.

When God appeared to Moses, Moses was a believing man whose life was going nowhere. He had settled into semiretirement in the desert. God came to him in the fire to give him a new commission—to deliver God’s people from the land of Egypt. God called this man out of an aimless retirement and gave him a ministry that was for the glory of God.

At Pentecost, the church was like Moses in the desert: nothing was happening through them to advance God’s purpose in the world. Then God’s fire came down. Imagine the fireball coming nearer and then dividing into individual flames, or “tongues of fire.” You remember that when the fire came to Moses, he was commissioned to advance God’s purpose, so you wonder who the fire will rest on now. Will it be Peter, or perhaps James and John? Maybe it will be all three of them?

You look up with awe as you see one of the flames coming toward you. Then you look around at the others in the room, and a flame of fire rests on every one of them. God is commissioning every believer to advance his purposes in the world. The presence and power of almighty God rests on you.

Everyone, including you, has a part to play in advancing God’s purposes for the world. God’s Spirit rests on all those who love Jesus and follow him.

For further reading, see Exodus 3