Acts 2:1-36; Genesis 11:1-11 – God Uses Reverse
A few years before John Newton, the writer of the song “Amazing Grace”, died, a friend was having breakfast with him. Their custom was to read from the Bible after the meal. Because old John’s eyes were growing dim, his friend would read, then John would make a brief comment on the passage.
One day, the selection was from 1 Corinthians 15. When the words “by the grace of God I am what I am” were read, John was silent for several minutes. Then he said, “I am not what I ought to be. How imperfect and deficient I am! I am not what I wish to be, although I abhor that which is evil and would cleave to what is good. I am not what I hope to be, but soon I shall put off mortality, and with it all sin. Though I am not what I ought to be, nor what I wish to be, nor yet what I hope to be, I can truly say I am not what I once was: a slave to sin and Satan. I can heartily join with the apostle and acknowledge that by the grace of God I am what I am!”
That is the hope of the believer. 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. Let’s read Gen.11:1-11 to understand the background.
You could look at the history of the world in 7 stages: creation, corruption (sin), catastrophe (the flood), confusion (Babel), Christ (Jesus entering the world), the cross (His sacrifice) and consummation (the end of all things). Babel was a significant event in the earth’s history. All people spoke one language up until then. Not only one language, but they understood each other too. V1 says they had one language, but it also says they had common speech. What’s the difference? Well, for example, for many years, the word “wicked” only had one meaning: evil. Now, over the last 20, it has also come to mean “eye-catching”, “interesting” or “very”. So, a teen calling something “wicked” can mean something very different from an 80-year-old calling something wicked. So, you can see that even though we have one language called English, things can be very different, and so be confusing to one another. Up until Babel this didn’t happen.
So, why did God do this? Because of judgement. Because of what the people were trying to accomplish. They were increasing in ingenuity and intelligence. They were trying new things, constructing new buildings. They discovered techniques for making bricks, fitting them tightly together, instead of haphazard stonework. And as they continued to progress, they began to think bigger and bigger. They wanted to build an impressive city with a tower that reached all the way to the heavens.
Now, that is not to say that we can’t try or do great things. God’s judgement is not upon forward thinking or innovations in technology. No, 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.
Now, the irony of this thing is that they got a name for themselves. They wanted a famous name, but what they got was Babel, which means “confused”. They wanted to be famous, and they wanted to remain strong together. But the Lord didn’t want fame for them or unity for them. He wanted them to be humble and confident in God’s strength, not theirs. And despite their best efforts, they were scattered anyway. The very thing they didn’t want was what God gave them.
And this whole thing was God’s judgement. 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.
But the Acts 2 Pentecost shows a different way that God moves now. It’s not that we now have authority that we didn’t have then. But Pentecost shows a new way of God’s movements – a way of mercy. Watch this: Acts 2:1-12. 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.
Notice the differences between Babel in Genesis 11 and Jerusalem in Acts 2. 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 2. After each event, the people were scattered. But the motives were completely different. One was out of shame, one was out of service. The Babylonians 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. And in the years to come, when persecution rose up against the church, and the believers were scattered over and over, it sent the message around the world. Instead of populating the world, like in Genesis 11, Pentecost was about evangelizing the world.
And this difference did not go unnoticed by the early church. Paul described life in the Spirit this way in Romans 8:2, taken from the contemporary language Bible The Message: ”The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.” The Spirit’s arrival at Pentecost cleared the air. It transformed the way we relate to God. Progressing from Babel to Pentecost shows a new wave of God’s mercy, an undoing of a judgement. It shows that even though God doesn’t always erase the mistakes of the past, it shows that He can work despite them. You are not a slave to your past!
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. I know some preachers love to come down heavy on sin, and I have been accused of not preaching on it enough. Maybe so, but Jesus got the same complaints. People complained that He 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.
Actually, Jesus’ harshest words were directed to the ones who thought they were alright. So to you who are smug in your self-righteousness, to you who are arrogant in your self-confidence, to you who are convinced that God’s church or God’s forgiveness is only for people like you, shame on you. But to you who know that lost feeling, that guilty conscience, that broken heart, that feeling of shame and disgrace, 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.
London businessman Lindsay Clegg told the story of a warehouse property he was selling. The building had been empty for months and needed repairs. Vandals had damaged the doors, smashed the windows, and strewn trash around the interior.
As he showed a prospective buyer the property, Mr.Clegg took pains to say that he would replace the broken windows, bring in a crew to correct any structural damage, and clean out the garbage.
“Forget about the repairs,” the buyer said. “When I buy this place, I’m going to build something completely different. I don’t want the building; I want the site.”
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 the site and the permission to build. Will you let the Spirit of Pentecost blow in your heart today?
