The Reversal of Babel: Understanding Pentecost's Power | Acts

This morning we'll be reading from the book of Acts, chapter 2,

Acts 2 · chapter mention

we'll be reading down to verse 13, continuing in our series on Acts.

Listen now and give attention because this is God's holy and inspired word.

When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place,

and suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind,

and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.

And divided tongues, as of fire, appeared to them, rested on each one of them.

And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak in other tongues,

as the Spirit gave them utterance.

Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven.

And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered,

because each one was hearing them speak in his own language.

And they were amazed and astonished, saying, are not all these who are speaking Galileans?

And how is it that we hear each of us in his own native language?

Parthians, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia,

Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, and the parts of

Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians.

We hear them telling in our own tongues, the mighty works of God.

And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, what does this mean?

But others mocked, saying, they are filled with new wine. This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God. You can be seated.

Let's pray together. Father, we ask now in the name of Jesus Christ that you

would help us by your Holy Spirit to understand how the Holy Spirit works and

brings Christ to us and that we would in this passage both see Christ love Christ

and follow him we pray in Jesus name amen.

So, this morning, we're continuing to look at Acts chapter 2 and continuing

Acts 2 · chapter mention

to look at the gift of tongues as it comes through the Holy Spirit.

And in a word, we're going to focus on this section as the reversal of Babel in Christ.

The reversal of Babel. There are many angles to the Pentecost event.

Last week, we looked at the symbol of fire and Pentecost as a feast, a harvest festival.

And as we look at the Old Testament roots, we also need to look at what's being

done here in the regathering of the nations that were once scattered at Babel.

As we'll go through it, I think you'll see clearly that this is not a coincidence

that all the nations that were scattered with a miracle of language,

with God coming down, striking confusion,

are now regathered with a miracle of language as God gathers them together in

Christ Jesus through the Holy Spirit.

We also need to keep in mind, as we go through Acts chapter 2,

Acts 2 · chapter mention

the context as Acts was beginning was the Great Commission prior to Luke starting this work.

So keep the Great Commission in mind. It's particularly powerful when you see

the gathering of the nations in Acts chapter 2 as a direct response to the call

Acts 2 · chapter mention

of Christ to make disciples of the nations. Thank you. You're awake already. That's good.

So the Great Commission, which says, and there's only one command in the Great

Commission, make disciples of the nations.

Going, baptizing, and teaching are what we would call participles.

They go along with the command of making disciples.

But the main command of the Great Commission is to make disciples of the nations.

It is worth repeating that we said before, but this little band of 11 guys were

given this Great Commission.

A small group of people who were uneducated, with no army, no political power,

no organization beyond themselves, were told, go conquer the nations, the whole world.

So it's an incredible commission that Jesus has given.

It's particularly incredible because in Acts chapter one, he leaves them and

they're all wondering, now what, what are we gonna do?

They even asked that question in John where Jesus said, I'm going to send you the comforter.

They're sitting there waiting for the promise of the Holy Spirit in the context

of the great commission.

That's what we have. And I want you to keep that in mind because when the Holy

Spirit comes at Pentecost,

And I know maybe I've said this before, I'm going to just keep pounding away,

just beating this drum, because it's so important, it's so critical for our

brothers in different traditions who see the work of the Holy Spirit as an addendum to Christ,

as an extra added blessing, as something more than just the coming of Christ.

But fundamental to our understanding of Acts chapter 2 and the Great Commission

Acts 2 · chapter mention

is that when the Holy Spirit comes at Pentecost, the Holy Spirit brings Christ,

not an addition to Christ, not something extraordinary, but Christ.

In Acts, we saw that Pentecost was a harvest festival connected to the salvation

of the Passover lamb and the first fruits, and now this great harvest feast that's about to begin.

The gift of the Spirit is nothing less than the gift of Christ himself to the

church. Christ has gone.

He has been enthroned. They wonder what's going to happen, and Christ comes

again with the same glory cloud presence that he left.

The glory cloud presence of God came and surrounded Christ. He disappeared within

that great glory cloud, and now the glory cloud comes again,

and there's shaking and noise like the sound of rushing waters,

and people are actually drawn to that.

The glory cloud presence of God returns to the Holy Spirit.

Pentecost is not actually focused on the wild work of the Spirit bringing tongues

or miracles or signs or wonders. We'll talk about this in the next few weeks.

The Holy Spirit does not have an independent role to bring these extra things.

The things, the signs, the wonders, the tongues of the Holy Spirit is Christ coming to his church.

We could say even that at Pentecost here, you're witnessing the establishment

of the new covenant community of God, the new tribe, the church.

You could even call it the constitutional convention of the church as the Holy

Spirit comes down and brings the church to us.

So what's happening with this gift of tongues? We saw last week that the fire

indicated judgment on the nation of Israel.

Pentecost was a blessing of harvest. So when God came down as our threshold

or judgment or harvest scenes, God comes down and there's a winnowing.

There's a separation of the wheat and the chaff. And the fire of John the Baptist

was coming now at Pentecost to separate the wheat from the chaff and to make

his church a dwelling place for all nations.

And at the beginning of Acts, the 11 chose the 12th apostle to replace Judas and they wait.

It says in Acts 1, they're waiting. While they were waiting,

he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise. What promise?

The promise which the Father had given and which Jesus had repeated.

And now chapter 2, when the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together

in one place waiting for that promise.

And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like the mighty rushing wind,

and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.

And it says, divided tongues as a fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them.

And as they were filled with the Holy Spirit, they began to speak in other tongues.

Keep in mind, I know I've said this and I'll keep repeating it because it's

going to help us to focus our ministry here at this church, not on extraordinary signs,

tongues, miracles, healings, wonders, all these things that some traditions

are not only interested in, they are almost obsessed with them.

The entire service where there are churches, there was a church across from

one of our favorite restaurants in Uganda. They always made a lot of noise.

It was called Miracle Healing Center.

So, what were they interested in? Miracles and healing and signs and wonders.

And you would ask anybody in the community, and they'd say, that's the church

that claims to be filled with the Holy Spirit, because that's the church where

you can see miracles, signs, and wonders.

But we see in Pentecost, as we learned last week, that this was a harvest festival,

where when Pentecost comes, there's new harvest.

And in this particular scene, there's harvest that begins the Great Commission in earnest.

Think of Pentecost as the harvest festival. The harvest is going to be the nations

of the Great Commission.

What greater blessing could there be than all the nations are gathered here,

are called together in Christ through the power of tongues.

And again, tongues is not an utterance of some sort of indiscernible babbling.

It's going to be interesting too, when you think of the Tower of Babel,

which we're going to contrast this to, that Pentecostal charismatic traditions

often actually bring confusion, the kind of which you see at Babel where people

are scattered and divided. Nobody knows what's going on. What is he saying?

These tongues that come here are actual languages. How do we know? The Bible says.

These people said, these are Galileans and yet we hear them in our own native tongue. It's not.

I saw a clip recently of Kenneth Copeland. Maybe you've heard of him. He's an old guy now.

I should use other charismatics as examples, but I just saw it recently where

he's preaching. He's saying, and Jesus loves you.

And they said, oh, hallelujah, he's speaking in tongues. Whatever he was doing,

it wasn't biblical tongues.

Whatever he was doing, biblical tongues is an actual language.

And the miracle of it is that it's a language you never studied.

It's a discernible language that someone could know, like Spanish or French

or some language. It's not a series of gibberish.

That's not it. So when the spirit of God brings tongues, He brings tongues in

fulfillment of a promise made in Genesis chapter 12, right after the Tower of Babel.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

Tongues comes to gather the nations. What's happening with these gifts of tongues? It's a miracle.

And next week and the week after, we'll talk about miracles.

How that they also, when biblically defined, are not continuing to happen.

Unless you count like straight in your leg as a sign and wonder and miraculous event, which it's not.

But here tongues are a discernible language.

We heard them speak in our own language, it says.

The miracle was not that people started speaking mysterious things.

It's that they were speaking a language they had never studied.

The nature of a miracle is that it's a supernatural intervention of God that

suspends the normal process.

How do you and I have to learn a language? Well, some of us,

it's harder than others.

If I had to learn a language, they have like what? Duolingo and Babbel and all

these other different things. Maybe you're using them for your homeschool curriculum.

It takes some time to learn a language. You have to study it.

You have to start with the good morning. Buenos dias.

Como estas? You go through the whole thing and you learn a language slowly.

I know that's about the only one we know. We should learn more,

by the way, Spanish because it's here.

So we learn a language by studying it. These people never studied the language.

It was a miraculous gift of the Holy Spirit.

And it was a sign that something was happening now at Pentecost for the down

payment of this harvest that had never happened before.

Something amazing was happening that would change the history of the whole world.

When God brought these tongues and these people were hearing them speak,

it says they spoke the mighty works of God.

These people were preaching the gospel in another language they'd never heard.

Man, as a missionary, I wish I'd had that gift.

So many times when I went to the villages, we were in an area where there were

five tribal languages within driving distance of where we were ministering in our churches.

And I oftentimes wished as I was going like, oh man, I wish I could just walk

in and start speaking to the language.

Just that village language, a little bit of Luganda, a little bit of the Gisu

and a little bit of this and that.

But it doesn't happen that way. If I were practicing biblical tongues,

that would be what would happen.

I could just walk in and speak in a language that other people would understand.

The confusion of using tongues as some kind of a babbling gibberish is actually

the confusion of the Tower of Babel.

Now, let me go to the Great Commission again. I want to look at the Great Commission,

Pentecost, and its Old Testament counterpoint in the Tower of Babel.

In the Great Commission, Jesus says, I want you to make disciples of ta ethne, the nations.

I don't know that it's specifically speaking of modern day nation states as

we know them, like UK, America, China, but ethnic tribal groups.

Today, for instance, in Uganda, there's a boundary that separates Uganda from

Kenya, but along that boundary, there's at least three discernible tribal groups.

Parents and grandparents live on one side in Kenya and whose children live on

the other side in Uganda.

What we're talking about here, I think, is more that. This tribal group,

the Pakot or the Kermajong or whatever the tribal group is, I think that's what's indicated here.

Today, it's more commonly to have tribal groups gathered in nations, nation states.

But I think the focus was that all these different language culture groups should

be reached by the gospel and would be.

Again, you can't imagine the task that was before them, especially since they

didn't know other languages, these 11 guys.

So the most distinct aspect of any ethnic culture group is their language and culture.

Now, I'm going to get into this a little bit because it's connected to both

the Tower of Babel and the importance of the church today as the unifying and

only unifying institution in the world.

Go back, if you will, and you might want to turn in your Bibles to Genesis chapter

Genesis 11 · chapter mention

11 to follow along a bit if you do that.

Is a story of the Tower of Babel. I heard it many times as a kid in Sunday school.

But what I wanna do is go to that story just briefly and outline some parts

and then see how it relates to our story at Pentecost.

So in Genesis 11, after the flood, we have a listing of the movement of Noah's

descendants as they came from Sham, Ham, and Japheth.

By the way, that's why it's important not to speak of these ethnic groups as racial groups.

They're not racial groups, that we all come from the same ancestors and parents,

but ethnic tribal groups whose language and culture and look would be distinguished

as they're scattered from the Tower of Babel.

So very shortly in Genesis' story, we see the nations which had scattered all

over the world were coming together again.

You remember that at the curse of Cain, what did Cain say he did not want to

have happen to him? I don't want to be scattered everywhere.

I don't want to lack community. I need to have a city. I need to have a community.

I need to have a people with whom I can belong and lead and be a part of.

That's what we're made for.

And you'll notice that the tower or the city of Babel, they had the same desire.

We want a community. We want a name.

We want a purpose. We want to do something in the world.

It's what we're made for. So the instincts of the tower at Babel are the same

instincts that Cain had.

We're not designed to live alone. We're designed to live in community.

The Tower of Babel, the beginning of Genesis 11, it says, now the whole earth

had one language and one speech. I don't know how your Bible translates it,

but it's interesting when you look at this because it's not the same word in Hebrew.

It could be translated, the whole earth had one lip and one language or one

confession or one theology or one worldview or one way of looking at things

that was connected to their speech, dabar in Hebrew, their words.

So that the words they used were connected to the confession and the confession

described and defined or defined the words they used, if it makes sense.

I'll try to make sense of it.

So at the Tower of Babel, and by the way, we call it the Tower of Babel,

but what they were building was a city, a city of Babel with a tower in it,

with religious worship at the center of the city.

And so they all had the same ideology. They had the same confession.

They had the same theology. and the theology was focused on this tower in Babel

in the middle and they built this tower.

By the way, it's not, I said I was in Sunday school and heard this story.

When I was in Sunday school, we had flannel graph.

Anybody old enough to remember flannel? Old folks are shaking their heads.

Young people, flannel graph was this little board they had in Sunday school

where you could, we used to throw things on it when the Sunday school teacher

wasn't there, but you throw things up and it sticks.

And I remember distinctly seeing the story of the Tower of Babel where she put

on the flannel graph board a long cylindrical tower, a large,

like maybe like the Tower of Pisa.

And on that graph, she would put clouds at the top because they were building

a tower to what? To reach the heavens.

I remember even as a kid, I was thinking, wouldn't it eventually like tip over?

What's going on? I mean, didn't they know? And the answer is they did know.

And the answer is also, it wasn't a cylindrical tower like that.

What we're talking about is like a temple tower or a pyramid or a ziggurat in

Mesopotamia, some sort of temple tower.

And when it said it wanted to reach the heavens, it wasn't that they really

thought they could engineer something to go into space.

It was a temple tower by which they could reach the gods,

which is related to the word babble the word babble does

not mean confusion the word babble means gate to

heaven these were a people who were attempting to

build a culture and a community around this one world religion which by which

they thought this was the place they could reach the gods they could get to

heaven this was the way and they had a united theology and as a result their

languages were used in the same way to describe this theology.

Theology or worship is always at the center of a culture.

As goes worship, so goes the culture. And I think that comes right here from our story in Genesis 11.

Babel was an attempt to build a gate to heaven that was a false gate.

It was a fake mountain to get to heaven.

The Tower of Babel was at the center of this false attempt to build a gate to heaven.

In fact, the word Babel means gate

to heaven. It's an interesting play in Hebrew when you read the story.

It says, God brought Balel, which in Hebrew means confusion.

He brought Balel to Babel. In other words, this gate to heaven,

which was a false gate to heaven, only and inevitably led to confusion because God made it so.

God, in fact, does what Cain did not want.

He did what the people of Babel did not want, and he did what no one wants. He scattered them.

As a result of this false attempt to unify people, to bring people together

in all of their diversity around

a false gate to heaven, the response of God is to confuse their lip.

It's fascinating to me because I always thought it was language.

Like, oh geez, they already started speaking different languages all at once.

But the word he confuses is their lip.

In other words, he disunified their worldview, their culture,

their confession, and they all began fighting. And as a result of that,

they all divided up into multi-ethnic groups who began to use different language

to express their own religion and their own culture.

And the result of Babel, the gate to heaven, was Baleel, confusion.

And it always is.

Please note that any attempt by any religion or any people to get to heaven

or to reach God through any other way other than Jesus Christ always leads to

confusion and chaos and division and strife and violence and ethnic tribal warfare and hatred,

which is common throughout human history.

God brought competing or multiplied numbers of idolatries, which began a virtual

explosion of fighting, infighting among the ethnic groups.

And the root cause, the root cause was religious, or you could even say.

Cultural. And I want to add a side note that I'm going to develop,

and I don't want to develop it so far that I become like too political or something,

but I want to develop it because we have to hear this.

Every revolutionary group that has ever existed in the world always goes after

language to confuse the way you think.

They always do. We're living in it massively.

Women's reproductive rights. It doesn't sound too bad. It sounds constitutional

until Roe v. Wade was overturned.

Women's reproductive rights. It's just a linguistic tricky way to talk about killing babies, right?

Women's reproductive rights. Women's liberation. That sound,

it's not for women's liberation. I love my wife. I want my wife to be liberated.

Maybe that's also a linguistic trick to undermine godly authority in the homes

and gender roles in the families.

Gender affirmation. Have you heard that one? Gender affirmation is a word that's

being used for mutilating children where they cannot recover.

Gender affirmation. You see that? A linguistic language trick to confuse the mind.

That's what revolutionary groups do. That's what people who are trying to undermine

your worldview and your way of understanding the world.

They use language that confuses, just like what happened at Babel.

Therefore, the name is called Balel because there the Lord brought confusion.

Balel means confusion, and any attempt to bring unity among peoples without

Christ will lead to similar confusion, and also violence and strife and hatred and division and chaos.

Confusion, hatred, and division, that is the legacy of Babel.

That is confusion that came from Babel.

And I might add, that is the result of all such false attempts to unify people

groups together without Jesus Christ. What's the answer?

When God in Genesis 11 scatters them, sends them out, everybody hates other

tribes. This tribe will not intermarry with that tribe.

This tribe speaks a different language than that tribe.

Eventually, the tribes move to different areas and claim those areas and those

boundaries, and they hate each other and they fight each other.

What's the answer? Genesis 11. Remember how tricky I am. Remember last week,

Genesis 11 goes to Genesis 12.

And in Genesis 12, the answer is found. Genesis 12, right after this scattering,

right after it seems like the nations cannot recover, how in the world could

they? They believe different things.

They think different things. They speak different languages.

They have a different culture.

What's the answer? Genesis 12 says, I will make of you a great nation.

I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing.

And I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you,

I will curse. and in you, ready, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

Right after the scattering of all the nations, all the tribes,

all the ethnic groups at Babel, there's a promise made that there'll be someone

to come that reunify these people.

And Jesus Christ is that answer. Amen.

Are you with me together now this morning? Some of you, only one family has

a wedding as an excuse for being tired. So, although some of you were in it.

So Jesus Christ is the only answer. Not By the way, there's many,

not the League of Nations and definitely not the United Nations.

I have seen the United Nations. There was a headquarters in Uganda.

I've seen what they do and they do not bring unity among the peoples.

I know some of you, yeah, but they do some good work. Maybe,

yes, but they will not be the answer to the unity of all the nations that gather there.

Sitting around in a circle and talking about things is not the answer.

Agreeing to treaties is not the answer. No political power, no president,

no prime minister, no United Nations, no group of nations.

Will ever be the answer to the scattering of the peoples at Babel.

Acts chapter 2 has our answer. And the sound of multitude came together,

Acts 2 · chapter mention

and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in their own

language, and they heard them speak the mighty works of God.

Sinclair Ferguson says this. He says, Acts chapter 2 is modeled after Genesis 10 and 11.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

In Genesis 10, Acts chapter 2 contains a table of the nations, verses 9 through 11.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

Like Genesis 11, Acts chapter 2 records a miracle of language.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

These parallels serve as a course to highlight the contrast between Babel and Pentecost.

While the diversity of tongues at Babel divided and disrupted the nations,

the diversity of tongues at Pentecost had the opposite effect of joining them

together into one people.

In spite of their differences, in spite of their tribal allegiances,

in spite of their languages, in spite of their color, in spite of their culture,

The gift of the Spirit was thus implies that all tribes and all tongues will confess Jesus as Lord.

And the outpouring of the Spirit is for the purpose of gathering these nations

in response to the scattering at Babel. What a wonderful thing this is.

This is the Pentecost harvest down payment of what God is going to do in human history.

He will reunite the tribes. He will reunite the nations.

He will bring us together as one people in Christ.

It's amazing. The one thing I remember is traveling around Africa.

I had this bewildering, speaking of being bewildered, experience of going to

worship at places where I didn't know the language.

It's pretty weird, actually. I was worshiping with Eritrean refugees who spoke

in Tigrini. I worshiped in Sudan where they spoke Arabic.

In Ethiopia, it was Oromo and Amharic. But it's interesting,

the one thing I heard over and over again was Yesu, Jesus.

Whether it's Arabic or Amharic or Tigrini or Luganda or whatever the language, it's Yesu.

And then I realized very quickly that even though I couldn't understand the

word they were saying, the one thing that brought us together was Jesus.

That was the unifying part of it. One of the problems we face in studying Pentecost

is only seeing the work of the Spirit somehow separate from Christ.

Then you'll be going on about tongues and miracles. But if you see it connected

to Christ, you see that the Spirit is not an addendum or work to Christ.

This is Dr. Richard Gaffin.

It's not some more or less independent

spirit of activity that goes beyond Christ or what he has done.

The Spirit's not a bonus added to the basic salvation.

The Spirit is nothing less than Christ himself coming to the church.

And connected to this is the unity of Pentecost.

Pentecost is nothing less than the establishment of the church as the people

of God for all nations. for all peoples.

Here we have before our very eyes, we see the chaos, confusion,

and separation of Babel reversed in a single moment by the miraculous power of the Holy Spirit.

Diversity is not a strength.

This is where I hope I don't mean to be too political, but I'm telling you,

and we heard this before we left for Africa, but when I've come back,

I'm looking at a nation that is stupefyingly bewildered and confused.

We don't even know who we are as a people. And I don't just mean Americans, I mean the church.

The redefinition of language in order to confuse people as to their worldview,

scramble their minds and confuse us is deliberate.

Imagine what would happen to an entire generation of children who go to schools

and are told diversity is our strength And oh, by the way, whether it's math

or science or English or grammar or whatever it is, you don't need Jesus.

You don't need Jesus to define your identity, your purpose, your meaning,

your destiny. You don't need God at all.

Talk about a great way to confuse a culture.

Start telling little children and people in the culture, diversity is your strength.

And by the way, I was a missionary.

I love diversity. I love different peoples. I love different foods,

different languages, different cultures, different colors. I love it all.

But I can tell you from our story in Babel and Pentecost, diversity alone is

not a strength of any people.

It brings chaos and confusion and strife, and I think it's deliberately done

so by many leaders. This is not a Republican or a Democrat thing either.

Much like the crazy slogan they endlessly hear, diversity is our strength.

In the Bible, we see very clearly in the story of Babel, when they had unity,

they had almost immeasurable strength.

That's why God said, these people are together. these people are unified.

There's nothing they can't do. It wasn't their diversity.

Diversity destroyed them.

The scattering destroyed them. It was their unity together that made them strong.

It's a ruse to divide people along racial, ethnic, religious,

gender, and all these other silly lines that's used today to cause people to

not even know how to think or speak.

Our first trip to Africa, and this is a long time ago, I think 2013,

I remember I asked my wife, where's the stewardess?

She said, and you have to whisper. You know how we all have to do now.

They're not called stewardesses. They're called flight attendants.

Oh, okay. Where's the flight attendant? I don't know. What's going on here?

I used to call them stewardesses or stewards.

It's not correct anymore. You're not allowed to say that. When I grew up,

we had firemen and policemen.

Oh, they're firefighters and police officers.

You say, well, why are you making such a big deal out of this,

pastor? Are you trying to get political? Yes and no.

What if you don't even know what to say about things anymore?

I've talked to many people many times when they'll say, I don't know what you call it now.

I don't even know what to call it now. What am I supposed to say about this?

I don't know what to say. I'm confused.

Because that kind of political correctness has divided us.

I even called once, again, my wife is so helpful, for my waitress.

Oh, they're not called waitresses.

They're, what are they? Oh, servers. They're servers. And I'm like, okay, I guess.

And again, I'm not trying to

say whether or not we needed some help with defining words here and there.

That's fine. but something's going on here when none of us knows what to say

about common things in our lives anymore.

We don't know whether to call them a server or a waiter or a waitress or whether

you're going to offend somebody when you do.

What's happening? It's confusion.

It's people who are spreading linguistic and language confusion on purpose to undermine things.

Undermine things. Gender-neutral language is really an attempt to define the

world in genderless terms, and that's not how God did it.

When God created man, he created them male and female, and that's it.

And we shouldn't be confused about it. Why? Because the Word of God teaches

us to have a clarity about life. Why? Because we have a united lip and a confession.

We believe in God, and we believe God made the world, and so we should speak

and use our language the way God made the world.

It's very liberating, by the way. You'll get in trouble from time to time,

but it's very liberating.

Language is used to form our minds and our theology. If you don't understand

this, read George Orwell's 1984 or his work on Animal Farm.

In the 1930s and 40s, Orwell was already talking about this.

In 1984, the people were confused. They didn't know what to say and who was

listening to what they said or what to do.

You can control and dominate any people when they're confused and fearful.

Orwell wasn't so much talking about Babel and theology, but I am.

When we have a united theology and a united lip and a united confession,

we then can begin to order and organize our world aright the way God has organized it.

It's exactly what Adam did when he named the animals.

Out of the ground, the Lord formed every beast and field and bird of the heaven

and brought them to the man to see what he would call them.

He's using his language. It's what distinguishes us from other creatures.

We're made in the image of God. We have language, sophisticated language.

And the man gave names to all the livestock and the birds of the heaven and

the beasts of the field. But for Adam, there was not found a helper.

You'll notice something that happens here.

A lot of times we just skip over this story. We go right on to the fall or to

the rest of the creation story.

This is very significant what Adam is doing. Adam is organizing and arranging

his world, exercising dominion over the world through language.

Through language. In our culture, unlike Africa, names don't mean much.

When an African names his child, he gives to that child theological,

philosophical, and genealogical significance.

This is who you are. This is your name.

And that's something similar to what Adam was doing when he was naming the creatures.

We had little children's videos when the kids were little, VHSs back then,

and we popped them in, and there's always the story of Adam and Eve in the garden,

as if they're at an all-inclusive resort, you know, in the water.

And a fish pops out and Adam says, you're a fish.

He'd go to giggles, you know, nervously. You're a fish, you're a bird.

As if it were just a random fun game that Adam was playing in the Garden of Eden. It wasn't.

When Adam named the animals, he came to the conclusion there was no creature like him.

He was organizing and ordering his world through the use of language according

to the way God had designed the world.

That's what we need to do also, except our center and our focus is Jesus Christ.

Here at Pentecost, we have Jesus Christ coming down to all the scattered peoples

of the world, all the different languages and saying, I am who will define you.

I am your source of unity. I am your source of hope. I am your future together.

No cultural thing that defines you anymore, but Jesus Christ.

And Jesus Christ is called in John chapter one, the Logos, the word.

He is the defining person or principle in all of the world and all of the universe.

At Pentecost, he comes to the church and says, I am now with you,

and I will be with you even to the end of the age.

Jesus Christ comes to his people, and that's our calling today,

to understand as the Pentecostal people of God that Jesus Christ is our center.

And I don't mean that merely because he saved you from your sins.

Yes, now he saved me from my sins. Now I need to define my life.

And my purpose, and my identity, and my meaning, and what I'm doing here.

And Jesus Christ, the Logos, is the center of all of that.

We see that at Pentecost. Are you convinced?

I'm not sure you're, some of you are convinced. I'm not sure.

Some of you are just still too tired.

Jesus is the Logos, the word who defines all things, who's made all things,

who's given purpose to all things,

who has a purpose in the future, who's ruling and reigning over all things,

and every name that is named, and every authority unto the church,

to us who are unified in Jesus Christ.

It should give us a glorious vision of who we are as a church.

We're not just Americans.

We're not just Africans. We're members of the body of Christ from every ethnic,

every nation, every tribe and every tongue.

That's how Revelation describes us in heaven as thousands upon thousands of

people are singing from every tribe and every tongue and every nation of the earth.

That is our destiny in Christ.

It's a glorious destiny. It needs to permeate us. It needs to fill us.

It needs to influence your homeschool moms.

Teach the children to love Jesus as they learn math. Jesus is the center of

math. You say, wait a minute, what?

Jesus has created an orderly, beautiful world. It seems that at the end of every

math problem, and this is from someone who hated math,

at the end of every math problem, that's when you follow the principles that

are there and you get the correct answer, and you will every time,

you should say, praise God.

God made a wonderful world. The learning and the education that our children

should be getting should be causing them to see Jesus Christ at the center of

everything and their whole lives.

The story is encouraging because we see that our only hope personally is in Jesus Christ, yes.

And now everywhere we turn in all of the confusion of this world,

we should not be confused.

We center ourselves on Christ and we define the world from Jesus' perspective.

It's interesting that Philippians, and I'll close on this.

Philippians says, therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the

name that is above every name, Yesu, Jesus.

So that the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and

under the earth. And listen, every tongue, every language shall confess that

Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Amen.

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for Pentecost. We thank you for the vision

that it provides for us as a people from all nations and all tribes,

ethnically diverse, where we also find a unity together, where there's beautiful

unity and diversity in a way that even is reflected in the Trinity itself,

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Make us a church, make us a people who love Jesus Christ so much that he is

at the center of our existence and that everything we think and everything we

believe, our lip and our language is defined and redefined constantly by reflecting on who Jesus Christ is.

Help us even as we come to the supper to be so thankful for what Christ has

done for us in sending the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and sending himself and

even now by the same Holy Spirit,

helping us to reflect and find joy in the body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We pray all these things in Jesus' name, amen.