Now the whole
earth used the same language and the same words. And it came about as they
journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.
And they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly."
And they used brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar. And they said,
"Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name; lest we be scattered
abroad over the face of the whole earth."
And the LORD
came down to see the city and the tower, which the sons of men had built. And
the LORD said, "Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same
language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing, which they purpose
to do, will be impossible for them. Come, let Us go down and there confuse their
language, that they may not understand one another's speech." So the LORD
scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth; and they
stopped building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there
the LORD confused the language of the whole earth; and from there the LORD
scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth.
In Acts this morning you heard the account of Pentecost. What you also
heard was of the miracle of the tongues, where the Apostles spoke in languages
they had never learned. This was the same thing that happened at the tower of
Babel, except that the purpose and effect of this sudden linguistic shift was
not confusion but understanding and peace. Although what happened was similar in
certain respects, it was the undoing of the tower of Babel. It was a mark in
time that the effects of sin were being undone, since sin had been forgiven.
Let's take a look at the tower experience and what it meant, and of course what
Pentecost means in the light of it.
The Tower of Babel is all about sin. I know that our human nature doesn't
want to hear about sin. That's because it seems too close to home when we hear
it. But the Tower of Babel is about sin. God set man loose on earth after the
flood with just one simple set of instructions: "And as for you, be
fruitful and multiply; Populate the earth abundantly and multiply in it" (Genesis 8:17). God wanted man to spread out and fill the earth.
The generations after the flood had another idea. They didn't want to spread
out. They didn't want to be scattered. They wanted to remain together. And
they said, "Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will
reach into heaven,
and let us make for ourselves a name; lest we be scattered abroad over the face
of the whole earth"(Genesis 11:4)
They weren't building a tower to reach into heaven - at least not the
heaven we tend to think of. They weren't trying to climb up to God. They were
trying to build a skyscraper. They wanted a building that could be seen from all
over the plains of Shinar. They wanted a rallying point to keep people together.
It was intended that no one would move to where they could not see the tower.
Admittedly, their vision was stunted. They would have been happy to build
something a hundred feet tall - ten stories would have seemed almost too tall to
endure. We build skyscrapers ten times that tall. And God has no problem with
tall buildings. The building was not the problem - nor was the desire to build a
tall building. The problem was the reason for the building. They built it to
defy God. They built it to deliberately disobey God’s command.
God recognizes that when we work together, we can do almost anything. I
can't imagine how people two or three hundred years ago could possibly conceive
this word of God, "Behold, they are one people, and they all have the
same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they
purpose to do will be impossible for them." In a pre-technological
age, those words would have had such a limited meaning. But we've
sent men to the moon and brought them back! We can do genetic engineering! It
may not be much today, but it is amazing that we can do it! And the next decades
could see breath-taking advances in our ability. We can fly. We can send manned
boats under the water with no need to surface for over a year! We have built
space stations. Computers talk, and when you talk to them, they type! They are
making movies now without the need for actors. We have seen a talking mouse, a
talking pig, long-extinct dinosaurs brought back to celluloid life, even talking
dinosaurs on Dynotopia.
God created us to be amazingly creative. But Nimrod and his crew were not
just creative, they were stubbornly rebellious. The tower was an act of sin,
thumbing their collective nose at God. And God put a stop to it. He confused
their tongues. He gave each family group a new language. I say it was family
groups because if every single person spoke a different language, families would
have been impossible. God wanted families and reproduction, so I guess that it
was by family groups, so that tribes moved away together. But work on the tower
was impossible when one worker - or group of workers could no longer understand
the next. Human fears and human egos forced men apart.
The
tower of Babel confusion of languages was God's judgment on the rebellion of the
builders. It was a response to their rejection of God and His will for them, and
it was effective because of their sin. If they had been willing to work with one
another and patiently try to understand one another, they could have learned
each others’ language. But their sin, their egos and their fears combined to
drive them apart. God had handed them over to their sin and the father of all
confusion.
That same combination of human traits works still today. Our sins, our
egos, and our fears about what the other is doing, or might do, still causes
divisions and drives people apart. The Church should be immune, but it’s not.
God has forgiven us, so we should forgive one another. But all too often,
offenses and sins are stored up instead of forgiven and forgotten. Our egos tell
us that we are somehow better than the others, whoever they may be, and so we
feel justified in holding grudges. We delight in making life difficult for those
we consider adversaries, or even try to control or defeat them - even in the
Church. We fear that our adversaries are plotting and planning and working
against us, so we respond many times by doing the same to even a greater degree.
Pentecost Sunday is the celebration of the truth that the Gospel has
ended the reign of sin. On Pentecost, God undid the power of Babel for just a
few hours, to speak the Good News of forgiveness and salvation across the
barriers of language. He didn't give everyone the same language; He gave His
chosen Apostles all of the languages so that everyone could hear the Gospel in
their own language, clear and precisely. It
was a foretaste - a sample in advance - of what life beyond sin is going to be
like. When God raises us to eternal life, there will be no language barrier,
because the confusion of tongues is the result of sin and a symptom of sin.
Where sin is not, the language barriers don't exist.
There will be no divisions, which are caused by sin. Our egos won't stand
in our ways because we will know clearly that what we all have, everything that
is good, is from God. We will also be free of fear of one another, since we will
all walk in the light of the Christ and sin will be unheard of among us. The
legacy of the Tower of Babel will be gone.
Pentecost Sunday, two thousand years ago, illustrated what it would be
like - what it will be like. With the languages (and the sin) out of the way,
the people rejoiced together. It didn't matter who they were or where they had
come from, they were simply the people of God together! Luke writes in Acts that
they were continually together for worship - the Apostles' doctrine and fellowship, the breaking of bread and prayer
- and they were all feeling a sense of awe. (Acts 2:42)
That’s the beginning of heaven! They were united without regard for who
each other was. They were excited about being together. They were eager to
worship, and they were all filled with the sense of awe - they were part of
something wonderful and that something wonderful had come upon them. When we get
to heaven, we will all be happy to be there. We will also be happy everyone else
is there. We will not ask where they came from, or judge them by their looks or
speech. We will be filled with awe at life in the presence of our Lord and we
shall worship together with great joy and zeal!
But we can start that right now. We live in the glow of Pentecost, not
the shadow of the Tower of Babel. The Holy Spirit is given to everyone that
believes and is baptized (Mark 16:16); He unites us. We are here to worship and
rejoice in our salvation.
What we want to respond to is the power of Pentecost not the confusion of
Babel. Our text tells us that the name of the place was "Babel"
because of the confusion of the languages there. The name of this place is
Church because we speak, worship and pray united in God's Peace. It is a place
of grace and faith and hope and love. Here is where we begin to unravel the
confusion of Babel by means of God’s love of and the forgiveness of sins -
forgiveness given to you, and forgiveness pouring out from you. In Jesus name,
Amen!
May the peace of God which
surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus! Amen