God Puts Things Into Reverse 

Acts 2:1-11; Genesis 11:1-9

Sermon by Pastor Dennis Gleason  -- January 21, 2007

The story is told of two ducks and a frog who lived happily together in a farm pond. The best of friends, the three would amuse themselves and play together in their waterhole. When the hot summer days came, however, the pond began to dry up, and soon it was evident they would have to move. This was no problem for the ducks, who could easily fly to another pond. But the frog was stuck. So it was decided that they would put a stick in the bill of each duck that the frog could hang onto with his mouth as they flew to another pond. The plan worked well--so well, in fact, that as they were flying along a farmer looked up in admiration and mused, "Well, isn't that a clever idea! I wonder who thought of it?"

The frog said, "I did..."  

During the Battle of the Wilderness in the Civil War, Union general John Sedgwick was inspecting his troops. At one point he came to a parapet, over which he gazed out in the direction of the enemy. His officers suggested that this was unwise and perhaps he ought to duck while passing the parapet. "Nonsense," snapped the general. "They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist--." A moment later Sedgwick fell to the ground, fatally wounded.

Genesis 11:1-9

¹At one time the whole world spoke a single language and used the same words. ²As the people migrated eastward, they found a plain in the land of Babylonia and settled there. ³They began to talk about construction projects. “Come,” they said, “let’s make great piles of burnt brick and collect natural asphalt to use as mortar. ⁴Let’s build a great city with a tower that reaches to the skies—a monument to our greatness! This will bring us together and keep us from scattering all over the world.”

⁵But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. ⁶“Look!” he said. “If they can accomplish this when they have just begun to take advantage of their common language and political unity, just think of what they will do later. Nothing will be impossible for them! ⁷Come, let’s go down and give them different languages. Then they won’t be able to understand each other.”

⁸In that way, the LORD scattered them all over the earth; and that ended the building of the city. ⁹That is why the city was called Babel, because it was there that the LORD confused the people by giving them many languages, thus scattering them across the earth.

Our first Scripture reading this morning is about the building of the tower of Babel. It is also a story of gross stupidity brought about by pride. They found a great plain where they could live called Shinar, that is Babylon, and decided to build a tower there. They believed they could build a tower that would reach to the heavens — perhaps to prove there was no God watching over them after all. With biting irony the Scripture says, “But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building” (Genesis 11:5). Their tower hadn’t reached heaven at all, in fact, God had to “come down” to “see the city.”

God’s judgement came because of their motives – v4. The KJV simply says, “Let us make a name.” The NLT puts it this way: “Let’s build a great city with a tower that reaches to the skies—a monument to our greatness!” And the Living Bible puts it even more vividly: “great city, with a temple-tower reaching to the skies—a proud, eternal monument to themselves.” In essence, they wanted to be famous. They wanted the applause of men. As a bigger picture, these people who moved to the plains of Shinar, that is, Babylonia, felt that through knowledge and self-effort they could get to heaven. Simply by trying hard enough, they could get to God. They could be great in the eyes of others, in fact, even as great as God.

But their success rested on their common language. If they could work together, they could do anything. Even God was aware of this. He looked down and said, “I see that they have one language, and they have a ton of pride too. I need to humble them." So He confused them. He gave them different speaking languages, and they couldn’t finish the building. And He scattered them abroad.

The whole purpose of the building of the tower was that they would be unified by one grand achievement. They had one language, and the plan was to gather everyone to live in the same place to accomplish great things. They did not want to be scattered, they needed everyone to work together. As a bigger picture, these people who moved to the plains of Shinar, or Babylonia, felt that through knowledge and self-effort they could get to heaven. Simply by trying hard enough, they could get to God. They could be great in the eyes of others, in fact, even as great as God.

But in the end, God reversed their plan and scattered them over “all the earth.” He confused them, giving them different languages so they could not understand each other. They wanted to be independent of God, but God reminded them that was not possible. The tower intended to bring people together was the tower that scattered people and drove them from each other. Alienation from God results in being alienated from others. Now their language, instead of being the same, all sounded like babbling — thus the name Babel. The place became known as Babylon — a city associated with evil throughout Scripture.   

The story of the tower of Babel in Genesis falls right after the story of the flood. God had brought about the flood in Noah’s day because of the rebellion of the human race and the resulting violence that covered the earth. The arrogance of mankind not only leads to stupidity, but to evil, and evil leads to the destruction of who we are as human beings. We are a threat to ourselves. Because God cares for us, he limits the evil we are capable of and diverts our path. It was God responding to the arrogance and pride of people wanting to be as great as Him. It’s the same trick as in the Garden of Eden. “You will be like Him,” the serpent whispered. Satan appealed to the flesh, the part of us that wants what we want, even if we don’t have the authority to take it. Every lustful thought, every affair, every act of violence, every rebellious act – every one is a result of wanting what we don’t deserve. It’s no different now than it was then.

However, the day of Pentecost began the reversal of this process. Pentecost is God ending the chaos and confusion of Babel and bringing about new understanding. The message of people of Babel was: “We are gods!” The message of the people of Pentecost was: “We are God’s.”

What Pentecost is saying is that God is not far away. We do not have to build a tower to get to him. The Bible says, “The righteousness that is by faith says: ‘Do not say in your heart, “Who will ascend into heaven?” (that is, to bring Christ down) or “Who will descend into the deep?” ‘ (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? ‘The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,’ that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming: That if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:6-9). God is not hard to find unless you are moving away from him.

The message of Babel is: “God is nowhere.”

The message of Pentecost is: “God is now here.”

But there are also the similarities between Babel and Pentecost. At Babel the people all came to one place to build a tower in order to reach the heavens. At Pentecost, the Bible says, “When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place” (Acts 2:1), and their purpose was to reach God. At Babel they all spoke one language, and God caused them to speak many languages. At Pentecost they all spoke one language (Aramaic with a Galilean dialect), and God caused them to speak many languages. At Babel God came down to the people, and at Pentecost the Holy Spirit descended upon the people. At both Babel and Pentecost the people were scattered — but with totally different purposes. At Babel the people scattered in hostility and chaos, at Pentecost they scattered with a new love and purpose in their hearts. . Babel showed a spirit of arrogance. Pentecost showed a spirit of humility. I mean, to pray with 120 other people for 10 days takes some humbling. Babel divided people through languages. But Pentecost united them with the gift of speaking in tongues, using words that broke past language barriers. Babel was about confusion, but Pentecost was about peace. Babel, quite frankly, showed us man full of himself. But Pentecost showed us man full of God. Instead of being controlled by our selfish motives and desires, we see at Pentecost man fully alive, full of God, passions and desires transformed into God’s priorities. Now, there is one common thing between the Babel and Pentecost. After each event, the people were scattered. But the motives were completely different. One was out of shame, one was out of service. The people at the Tower of Babel were scattered out of judgement. But after Pentecost, when the believers returned to their own homes, it was to share the love and mercy of God. They were scattered to serve. Instead of populating the world, like in Genesis 11, Pentecost was about evangelizing the world. They wanted to spread the good news.

That is the purpose of Pentecost: To give new purpose. It was to change chaos and confusion into understanding; to turn us from rebellion to love and obedience through the power of the Holy Spirit; to turn despair into hope; to bring a new love into our hearts that wants to reach out to God and others.

That is the hope of the believer. Because of Jesus’ sacrifice for my sins, I am not what I once was. We believe that we can be changed. We do not have to be slaves to the same habits and patterns that we once had. We can have clean consciences, clean thoughts, clean hands, and clean hearts. And the very fact that we can be changed – or rather, that God can change us – rests in the theme of the celebration of Pentecost in Acts 2. The theme, the essence, the meaning of the Acts 2 Pentecost was that God was doing something new. He was bringing in sweeping changes. He was undoing what had been done. He was breaking a curse that had been in effect for generations.
 
 But in Acts 2, Pentecost shows a different way that God moves now. Pentecost shows a new way of God’s movements – a way of mercy.

 What does this mean? It means that Babel has been reversed. The curse is broken. The day of mercy has arrived! Peter said in his Acts 2 sermon that the Spirit, as evidenced by signs and wonders, was proof that God had raised Jesus from the dead and made Him Lord and Christ. The giving of the Spirit was a sign of a new day from God.

  At the Army Training Camp at Fort Dix, New Jersey, there is a large box at the entrance with a large hole on top. You may drop in that box, without fear, any illegal substance - drugs, alcohol, knives, guns - and begin a new life in the army. That’s the way God works, too. People complained that Jesus was offering forgiveness to too many people, that it was coming too easy. But Jesus made it His mission to give hope to the discouraged, to give freedom to the captives, to give healing to the hurting. He preached that God gave second chances.

God has a breath of fresh air for you. You can be forgiven! You can be healed. You can be found. You can have hope. You can be filled with the Spirit and be used to draw people closer to Him. That’s the radical optimism of Pentecost.

You know, we try to change our lives and clean them up. But God has bigger plans. The Bible says that when we become God’s, the old life is over, and He makes all things new. All he wants is your life and the permission to build. The queston for us all today is will we let the Spirit of Pentecost blow in our hearts today?

 To gain some understanding of what took place on that day, we need to look at what the Jewish holiday of Pentecost meant to the Jews that trusted Jesus. What did Pentecost mean for the early believers, and what does Pentecost mean for us today?

The word Pentecost means 50. It was 50 days after Passover. It was also called the Feast of Weeks. A week is 7 days, and a week of weeks would be 7X7, or 49, and the Feast was held on the 50th day after Passover. Now, the history of Pentecost goes way back to the giving of the Law by God to Moses. It was an agricultural holiday – that is, its date was chosen by God to coincide with the harvest. Which is why Exodus 23:16 calls it the Feast of Harvest.

Pentecost was one of 3 pilgrim festivals when all Jewish men were required to travel to Jerusalem with sacrifices and offerings. The other two were Passover, 50 days earlier, and the Festival of Tabernacles, in the early autumn. The reason so many people were in Jerusalem for the Pentecost of Acts 2 is that it was a pilgrim festival. Who knows how many were there in the city that day? Perhaps a million or more. It’s because attendance at Pentecost, the Feast of Weeks, was required for all good Jewish men. The whole holiday revolved around people coming to God. Sacrifices and offerings were brought to Him. Jews met God in his city, on His terms.

And the wonderful message of Pentecost is that we really are not alone. Pentecost shows that the Holy Spirit, the presence of God, walks with us and talks with us every day. Through the good times and through the bad, even though we are strangers on this earth, our heavenly Father has not abandoned us. The Spirit is with us.

 The dominant impression that the world has of the church is: be good. Isn’t that true? Church is for good people who have stopped doing the things they call sin. Or maybe it’s for people who have guilty consciences and need help with them. And so they come to God for help. The idea that the world has of the church is people going to God for help.

But that’s not what makes the church different from other religions. No, Christianity is really about God coming to us.

So God made the 1st move. He gave the Law, so that we would know how to follow Him. He gave His Son, so that we would be forgiven for all our misguided attempts to follow Him. And then He gave the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, so that we would have the power and the courage and the strength to follow Him. Even when we draw near to him, it’s because He drew near first. When we reach out to Him, it’s because He reached out first. When we love Him, it’s only because He reached out first. The Holy Spirit, God’s presence in our lives, is proof that we don’t come to Him without His first coming to us.

But you have to understand, we’re harder to find than God is. We hide behind our image of having it all together. We hide behind our self-righteousness, which even Jesus couldn’t break through. We hide behind pain and suffering, blaming God for the rotten things in our life. We hide behind criticism and condemnation of others, because we will not forgive ourselves. We hide behind things we use to make ourselves feel important, our talents and abilities, crutches we use, when all the while God gave them to us to worship him with. No, we don’t look for God. He’s not lost. We are. Which is why Luke 19:10 says: “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.”

So, Christianity is really about God coming to us. You see, it’s not that coming to God is bad in itself. God commanded it, in fact. But if that’s all that happened, our religion would be a matter of earning things. Being good enough would matter. Being smart enough would matter. Getting our act together would matter. God would only be for the spiritual ones, the useful ones, the healthy ones, the good ones. You’d have to know something or have something or be something in order for you to come to God.

 Instead of all of this, God came to us. He came into our world as the son of Mary, to live and die for us so that we might be forgiven and made righteous by our faith. He came as the Holy Spirit to come upon us to give us the power to touch the lives of others with the good news about Jesus and to live within us so that we in turn might become like Jesus. His coming changed the lives of people just like us and ultimately made the world a different place. When the time is right, Jesus will come back and bring about the fulfillment of all things that God has promised. Until that day comes, we have the presence of the Holy Spirit upon us and within us. All this is possible because God came to us.

The message of Pentecost is this: God is not far away. God is now here near to us. He has not abandoned us. He has sent His Holy Spirit to be with us, to empower us so that the world around will know that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior. All of this has taken place so that the real harvest – the harvest of souls – might be celebrated here and in Heaven too. So that a world that is lost in pride might be touched by the love and mercy of God in Christ Jesus.