Pentecost: The Reversal of Babel - Acts 2:1-13
Pentecost: The Reversal of Babel
By David Mason Scroggins
Intro: As most of you know, languages and diverse cultures are often a barrier to coordination or even simply cooperation among various people groups. When we travel over seas to a foreign country there is a huge barrier between us and the people around us. That barrier is mostly language, but also culture.
I want you to imagine for a moment that we lived in a world without these barriers where everyone spoke the same language and had a similar enough culture that they could coordinate large scale projects.
If you think biblically about this, this imaginary world would take you back to Genesis 11. Here you find a post-flood economy that has united in the power of humanity. Yes, God may have wiped the world clean of men, but hey here we are and look at us! So they agreed to build a city of man. And this city of man would tower its way all the way to heaven and be called…. Babel.
This word is not forgotten. Not only do good Sunday school students remember the story of how God thwarted this city of man by confusing their languages at babel, but even the word babel is used now to describe a kind of breakdown of communication. Someone who “babbles” speaks in an unintelligible or confused way. A drunken man babbles. A person out of their mind babbles. A delirious and wounded man babbles. And the Hebrew word from which we get Babel even means “to mix” or “confuse.”
In our text today we are going to look at the miracle that happened at Pentecost in Acts 2 where a group of Jesus’ disciples began speaking in tongues. And at the outset they are accused of babbling like drunken men until the meaning of these tongues are explained by the Apostle Peter in a sermon to the onlookers.
What I would like to do is see how this text has perennial significance to the church today. How the disciples of Jesus might be able to speak clarity to a culture that initially sees the work of the Spirit as confusing and nothing more than babbling on. To do this we need to first look to God’s word to order our thoughts and then ask his spirit to breathe upon us illumination so that we ourselves might understand.
Acts 2:1-13 / Pray
Textual Approach
Here’s the way I would like to tackle this text. There is a ton that could be said about the significance of Pentecost, but if we don’t start with the big picture, I am afraid we might miss how the details of the story all tie together and fit into the greater narrative of history of the early Church in Acts.
So today will be a thousand-foot view that introduces the cultural impact of Pentecost. In other words, what happened and what shifted at Pentecost that makes the world a different place than what it was before this took place.
Next week we will look at this text again and seek to better understand the details and religious significance of the story.
What happened?
So big picture: You have a group of disciples all together in one place and suddenly a mighty rushing wind from heaven comes and they all begin speaking in other tongues under the influence of the Spirit who gave them utterance.
Some details you should pay attention to is where this comes from. Vs 2 says it was from heaven. So at the outset this would have been, and should have been, interpreted as a divine message, an act of God from heaven.
So this group of disciples are the recipients of this miracle, but another important factor to this event is found in vs 5. Here we find the witnesses to this event are mostly Jewish representatives from every nation under heaven. And I say mostly Jewish because vs 10 clarifies that this wasn’t just Jews gathered. It was also proselytes, God fearing pagans who were seeking God according to mostly Jewish customs.
What we should draw from this is that God is speaking and acting on behalf of his people-who by the way aren’t all ethnic Jews. And these aren’t all Jerusalem natives that are gathered here either. These are the people of God that have re-gathered from among the dispersion for this Jewish festival. Though this takes place in Jerusalem, every nation under heaven is to witness this event. And to better clarify what the message meant; the onlookers somehow heard this in their own language it says in vs 6&8.
Here you have a group of Galilean Jews all speaking “in tongues” and all the foreigners are scratching their heads saying, “Wait a second…how come I can understand this as a Parthian, you can understand this as a Mesopotamian, and this Asian over here is hearing the same thing in his own language. What is going on?”
What does this Mean?
They are amazed and perplexed and in their confusion they ask, “What does this mean?” in vs 12.
To better understand what is going on we need to look at the content of their speaking in tongues. Is this gibberish? Is there a barrier being erected that is going to cause greater confusion? Are they babbling?
Vs 11- “We hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.”
Let me break that verse down a bit more. The method of the message was communicated in a familiar tongue, their own language. The content of their message was “the mighty works of God.”
Church, they were not babbling, they were un-babbling. The answer to the onlooker’s question “What does this mean?” is that this amazing event symbolized a reversal of Babel.
How is Pentecost the Reversal of Babel?
“How so?” You might ask.
What you need to realize about Babel was not just the language barrier that was erected. It was why that was erected. Its not that God hated that they could communicate. Its that God was displeased with where their communication was heading. He was displeased with their point of unity and the direction that it was taking them.
If you think about it Babel marked a very important day for humanity. It was the day that God put a stop to human’s uniting around “the mighty works of man.”
Its not a long story, so I will read for you the entire story from Gen 11:
Genesis 11:1–9
[1] Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. [2] And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. [3] And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. [4] Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” [5] And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. [6] And the LORD said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. [7] Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” [8] So the LORD dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. [9] Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth. And from there the LORD dispersed them over the face of all the earth. (ESV)
To draw the lines a bit more clearly if you did not notice them from the text.
· At Babel the people move from one language and same words to confused and different languages.
o At Pentecost they move from different languages to all hearing the same message in their own tongue.
· At Babel the people had settled in one central location in the land of Shinar but were scattered and dispersed in the end
o At Pentecost the people were settled but dispersed and regathering in Jerusalem at once central location.
· At Babel the people were uniting in the power of humanity to build up to heaven and God came down and objected to their building
o At Pentecost the people were uniting in the power of God and God came down and approved of their gathering.
· At Babel the people were stopped at building a city of man
o At Pentecost the people were started at building a city of God.
Now, if you hear all of those connections and you are still saying, “Yea but we still don’t all speak the same language. Babel hasn’t been reversed.”
If that’s you, you are getting too hung up on the tongues. Tongues or languages weren’t the point in Genesis 11 or Acts 2. The message from God is the point, the tongues are just a sign.
The Message of God in Pentecost
And that message in Gen 11 is that God would create a barrier to curb the innovative pride of man. The shocking thing about Gen 11 is that God doesn’t come down from heaven and say your pride will get you nowhere. He doesn’t say that pride is powerless. In fact, he says the opposite.
He says if I don’t put some kind of barrier to your city of pride, you may in fact build this empire into the heavens and nothing would be impossible for you. You could play god as it were. You could overcome all kinds of obstacles in the name of pride. You may even take pride in you pride.
You might create a whole new humanity yourselves that is not created in the image of God, but in the image of man. Your devious tinkerers, your curious biomedical engineers might make it possible for all kinds of things. Things your pride will blind you to. Things your worship of autonomy might lead you to that you never imagined the grave implications to. You might create a whole virtual reality that is founded on a lie. The lie that your will is the ultimate truth.
You see, language wasn’t the problem God had with humanity. It was just their greatest tool. And interestingly enough you, will find that language is now the post-modernists greatest weapon. Because language is the most powerful way we can construct a lie. Whether that language by computer code or English, with language you can build a false narrative that actually has powerful implications. We would like to believe that lies are powerless because they are not true, but that itself is a lie we cannot accept.
So what about Pentecost? Is it not about tongues? No. The miracle of Pentecost was that God, through the sign of tongues, gave a message to the world. I am re-building humanity. I am re-gathering humanity. I am re-uniting humanity. Not in their pride and their mighty works, but the “mighty works of God” as it says in vs 11. I am re-building the city of God in my name, not theirs.
And Church, this was the plan all along. At Babel God said nothing will be impossible for them when they make a name for themselves if I don’t confuse their languages. At Pentecost God said nothing will be impossible for them if they ask anything in my name-the name of Jesus. And to bring about this powerful truth he breathed upon them the Holy Spirit to empower their mission.
Conclusion
So through Jesus, the new man, the spirit of the God has breathed upon his people and created a new city, with a new vision, a new king, a new people, a new nation, with a new culture. The cultural and societal impact of Pentecost is that now we have divine sanction to begin the rebuilding project. How might this challenge us to rethink our role in society, church?
No longer are we confused about our mission of culture; we are to unite in the powerful vison of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Who he is, as king and Lord, becomes the point of unity where we can confidently say that God approves of our cultural mandate of Christian reconstruction. And the beautiful thing about Pentecost is that this unity happens within diversity. Language and culture are no longer barriers because they too bow down to the Lordship of Jesus. One flock- one shepherd, Jesus says.
This is one of the central themes in Acts as the gospel spreads to diverse cultures. Not everyone adopts Jewish culture! They conform all culture to Christ which baptizes (but does not obliterate) the present culture of say a Roman or Mesopotamian. They all hear the mighty works of God “in their own tongues.” Therefore Christian culture emerges as its own new counterculture that seeks to build a new kind of city- the city of God, the kingdom of Heaven.
Babbling in the ruins and wandering in confusion is no longer excusable. The mystery has been revealed for the world and Christ is that mystery that unites all things in heaven and on earth under his name and he gives us the Holy Spirit who is that seal of our inheritance in the Kingdom of God.
And that is what we will be looking at next week. How Pentecost breaks ground on the restoration of all things in the kingdom of God under the kingship and Lordship of Jesus Christ.