Pentecost

This is today's scripture reading is from Acts chapter two, verses one through thirteen.

It says, 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, and 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 speak Galileans?

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

Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and 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 mocking said, They are filled with new wine.

This is the word of the Lord.

You may be seated.

Thank you for joining us this morning.

It's a pleasure to get together, get to gather together as a church each week.

It's one of the great joys of life, and so it's wonderful to be here together with you.

I'm sure you have afternoon plans.

Many of you, at least some of you, are in bright green for some reason.

And uh it's great to be together with you.

So let's pray and then we will move into our text for the day.

Holy Father, we praise you that you speak to us by your word, and that you give us your Holy Spirit so that we might rightly understand your word to us.

Lord, your spirit applies the word to our hearts and calls to mind the teachings of our Lord.

Father, I pray that your spirit would work in our hearts this morning, so that by your spirit we would gain understanding of your gospel.

We would see the extent to which your gospel spreads.

We would see the unity that you bring by the proclamation of your word.

Father, I pray that you would affect our hearts to become true members of your body, Lord, with you, Christ, as our head, that you hold us together and that the deepest parts of our identity become found in you, as you give us that identity down from above.

Father, we pray that you would make us members of your church globally, and that you would build us together, unite us together in love as this local community of your church.

Father, you are able to do that by the power of your Holy Spirit.

We pray that you would.

In Jesus' name, amen.

So this is the Pentecost week.

We're we're moving through Acts and we are getting to, we have arrived at the day of Pentecost.

Now, the way that I want to frame this is there's this there's this deep question.

It's like one of the deepest philosophical questions.

I don't know how you measure depth of philosophical questions, but but lots of people say, the smartest people all say that this is one of the deepest philosophical questions.

And the and the question goes like this it's how can the one coexist with the many?

It's called the one and the many problem.

How can the one coexist with the many?

One way to think of it is how can we say that we are one church, that there is such a thing as Redemption Church Denver, that we are one thing.

We can name it and call it that.

When the reality is, look, I can see you all from here, you're all different people.

You're all your own sorts of things.

You all each take up the space of about one human.

And as aren't you, is it is there really a redemption church that we can say there's one thing there?

Or it when we're being honest, isn't it just a group of individuals that just happen to be like uh gathered together like a clump of bricks or something?

How could we say that we're united, that we're one body, such that we could have that identity of oneness?

The the one in the mini problem, it's uh it's it's an old one.

It goes back to the pre-Socratic philosophers.

One of them named Parmenides proposed that all things are one.

This was his solution to the problem, that all things are one.

That there that all change is just an illusion.

Change is just an illusion.

All things really are just one.

We're all part of the one thing, you know, that is happening.

You can hear this uh still in in uh this way of thinking, this oneness way of thinking, I think is still typical of like like sort of like new age ways of understanding and thinking of the world.

Uh, that we are all one.

You know, there's there isn't all the distinctions between us are mere illusions.

We are we are all one.

We're all one with the universe.

I um uh heard that like we're you you are something that the universe is doing in the way that an ocean in a way that a wave is something that the whole ocean is doing.

You know, phrases like that.

You can post that as like your AOL away message.

You know, something like that.

But then there's others that that say that though the oneness is totally an illusion.

And this is more, I think this is more in line with our our scientific way of thinking.

This one is perhaps more intuitive than us.

We often tend we often tend to find the reality of things or think that we've discovered the reality of things by breaking down the component parts.

And we say the component parts, that's all that it really is.

What it is, is just the component parts.

And so, you know, uh a church, this is the way that like a scientist would come in and describe a church.

No offense, scientists.

Some of I know some of you are scientists and you're lovely people.

But here's the way that uh that uh scientist might come into the church.

He'd say, really, really all it is, is it's a group of individuals that just happen to be sitting in the same room for a certain amount of time.

There's not they they it's not a real thing.

It's not a there's not a unity to it, there's not a oneness to it.

Really, if you really understand it, you know, really what you are as a body is you're just chemical reactions.

Like finally, ultimately, at the end of the day, what you are is you're just different mechanical and chemical reactions.

That's really what you are.

You know, that's really what you are.

See how that's the collapse into the parts.

It's a hard question.

The question is, well, where is the identity of a one thing that is made up of many parts?

How can there be unity that you are members of Redemption Church Denver, parts of a body, of a one thing, a one community, but you're still you.

You're still who you are.

Now, this problem it goes all over the place.

You you experience it in all kinds of ways.

And uh we can see the the wrestling with it, what it means that there is a wrestling with this, because we we understand that if there's too much oneness, like if there were too much oneness in Redemption Church, then you would walk in and you would get that thing and you'd be like, this is a cult.

And the in that's like too much oneness.

And it's because we would all be wearing orange.

And you would be able to look around and you'd be like, I I know I I talked to 12 different people, but it kind of felt like I talked to one person 12 times.

You know?

And it would be like, this doesn't feel like a, we would say this is not a healthy body.

There's something about this, there's too much oneness.

That's because we understand that too much oneness is tyranny.

Too much oneness means that there it's almost like the distinction between the body and the parts.

There is no distinction anymore.

It's too much oneness.

It's too that's that's tyranny.

But then the other side of that is you are a the other side of that is absolute diversity.

And diversity is that's that's there is no identity of the group, it's decomposition.

You know, when a body becomes very diverse with its parts, that's that's the s that's a body decomposing.

You know, they are they are not joined to the same aim anymore.

And you can tell because there's a difference between there's a difference between a um a crowd of people and an audience.

And there's a further difference between an audience and a congregation.

See, these are different levels of unity.

Yesterday we went to uh I went to see the monster trucks.

You know.

I'm a fan.

And uh when we were when we were in there, you know, every nobody's like, I'm sure there are people that are like, I follow monster trucks and like keep track of it and stuff.

I don't think there were many of those there yesterday.

What happened was we all gathered together and we were a crowd.

Walking in, you're a crowd of people.

And then the show begins, and there was this one moment where where El Toro Loco did a backflip, and we weren't a crowd anymore.

We were an audience, we were united, we were one, we were one sort of thing that was happening there because of our attention being given it, all these diverse parts became one thing.

So that that's a that's and then when we were back in the parking lot, all these people who just moments before I was one with at the backcliffe of El Toro Loco, then in the parking lot, getting out of the ball arena parking lot, we were we they were all my enemies.

We I had no loyalty to any of them whatsoever.

They were they were in my way.

You know, then that that we were a crowd then.

That was just a crowd.

It was a crowd.

Did you see how how you go back and forth between these things all the time?

There's not a uh one more example.

There's not a church small group that hasn't had a question like this.

Should we be open?

Should we be open and like let people in?

Should should there be new people coming in or should we be closed, like for a time, be closed.

And then here's the here's the arguments.

You can you nobody we don't Can I just say we don't have to have this conversation anymore?

We can have it once now.

Because here this is one of those topics where it's like, okay, everybody take your places, and then we all say the same thing over and over again.

Well, if we're if we're not open, then we won't be able to spread this good thing that we have, and we won't be able to bring other people into this good thing that we have.

And they they aren't we on mission?

Aren't we here to bring other people into this?

And then that's so that's one side, and then the other side says, yes, but if we open it, will we even have this good thing that we have?

We will we will we have the comfort with one another, this goodness that we've developed together with one another?

Will we be able to experience that?

Like this group has a great identity right now.

How do we know that this will be preserved and uh in this wonderful thing that we have?

And then and then they do the one in the many problem, you know, together.

It's an argument about identity, it's integration.

Where is the oneness?

Where is the individuality?

Well, I think that this problem is spoken to, this is addressed at Pentecost.

I think the deepest roots of this one in the many problem are shown to us through the way that Pentecost, in this an unthinkably glorious way, this magnificent, miraculous way, pushes us right into the one in the many problem and shows how a body could come from these glorious, how a glorious unity of body could come from these parts without destroying the parts.

That's what we'll see.

Okay, Acts 2, 1 through 2.

Let's jump in and we'll see, we'll see how that how it shows us this.

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.

So the early followers of Christ are gathered together.

They are in a house now, they're not gathered together in the upper room, it doesn't seem.

And all of a sudden, a sound, a glorious sound from heaven comes down and fills the house like a mighty rushing wind.

And this happens on the day of Pentecost.

Pentecost is the it's the feast that takes place 50 days after the Passover.

You can hear the 50 in it.

Penta 5, you know.

So it's the it's the 50-day feast.

And what it is is it's a celebration of the first fruits of the harvest.

This is like the early spring feast.

The first fruits of the harvest are coming in, and they're bringing it, they're it they have a celebration uh for this these first fruits of the harvest.

And there's some sort of completeness about it that's being pointed to here.

You know, uh 50, you can think of it like this.

What's what's seven times seven?

Good job, math facts.

Plus one.

Yeah, that's right.

So what we have is we have this complete cycle of a seven times seven.

And then we have a plus one, which puts it on a Sunday from the Sabbath, because it's the Lord's Day.

There's a lot of eighth day, fiftieth day, there's a lot of Lord's Day pointers in the Old Testament that's worth paying attention to.

It's pointing towards the shift from the Sabbath to Saturday to Sunday in the New Testament church.

So they're gathered together on this 50th day, the disciples of the Lord, and the first thing that comes to them is this is this sound from heaven.

It's a mighty rushing wind that comes down from heaven.

We can imagine it in this room.

If all of a sudden this room became extremely loud and windy, it would be very bizarre.

Be a very bizarre experience.

And that's what happened to them.

And we wouldn't say like, wow, some strange event or something, because it's just a room.

This is a wind that comes to them from heaven.

It is God coming down, the Holy Spirit coming down.

Wind is associated with the Holy Spirit throughout the whole scriptures.

Even in the words, the Hebrew word rua, the Greek word pneuma, these are words for wind and words for spirit.

They're the same words, wind and spirit.

It's the same word.

Because the wind is the type of thing that you you know it's out there because it moves your hair, it rustles the leaves and the trees, you can see it knock over fences when it really gets crankin', but you can't see the wind.

You can see the effects of the wind, but you can't see the wind.

That's what the Holy Spirit is like.

You can see his effects in the world, you can see him moving things in the world, you can you can see him changing you and changing your heart, but you can't see him.

It's an it's an invisible power, and so the wind is an appropriate term for this.

And the wind throughout the scriptures, we see the glories that the Lord accomplishes by the wind.

In Genesis 8, uh, verse 1, after the flood with Noah, the Lord sends a wind over the waters to dry the waters.

So he begins the new world after Noah, after the world had been cleansed by a flood, by sending his wind over it.

You can see the Holy Spirit is beginning a new world.

In Exodus 14, 21, when they are pressed up against the Red Sea, it is the wind that comes and creates the dry land, so that they are able to walk across into the new world of being a nation, of being a nation which the Lord made for himself, the Israelites, making them into a nation as they cross the Red Sea, wind bringing dry ground into a new world.

You see, it's that happened twice now.

In Job 38:1, when the Lord speaks to Job, he speaks to him out of the whirlwind.

Job 38:1

So there's so there's that.

Ezekiel 1.4, in Ezekiel's vision of the throne of God, it begins with a stormy wind that he sees.

We are meant to make this connection.

The wind in the room is the presence of God arriving, and it comes with this great, enormous sound.

And then there's something that they're able to see.

In Acts 2.3, it says, and divided tongues as a fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them.

So that means that they could see these divided tongues.

You can think like how you know how fire is kind of like tongues, all movie and wiggly.

Think of it like that.

So divided tongues as a fire, they they they divide.

That means that that they apportion they are apportioned to the people that are gathered together in this room, the apostles and the others that are gathered together in this room.

And the divided tongues as a fire come and rest upon the people, so that they have like like fi, they're covered in fire.

Now, normally, this is bad.

But they are covered in fire and yet they are not consumed.

They're covered in fire and they are not consumed.

Does that remind you of something else?

Remember when Moses goes to the burning bush and he recognized the angel of the Lord appears to him out of the fire, and he notices that the bush is burning, but it is not consumed.

You know the same thing happens on Mount Sinai?

The mountain is burning, but it's not consumed.

Well, now what is what is the place of the Lord's presence?

It was a sign to Moses and to the Israelites that this is the place of the Lord's presence.

Because there is a fire that is not consuming, it's not relying on something external for its energy.

It's like an intrinsic fire.

And it's resting now on the people of God.

What is what it's what's being shown here is here is where God dwells.

Here is where the presence of God is.

It is just as John the Baptist had prophesied, exactly what he had prophesied would happen.

As he explains that, as he had prophesied before, that they would be baptized with fire.

I baptize you with water for repentance, John the Baptist said.

But he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry.

He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

That's what's happening.

He is baptizing his church with the Holy Spirit and with fire.

They, the his church, the people of his church, are the place where God dwells.

Just as the Spirit came into the temple after Solomon's building of it in his prayer, so too does the Spirit come into the new temple of God, which is his people.

And he baptizes them with the Holy Spirit and with fire.

Fire is bright and warm.

It is also dangerous and consuming, but it is refining and purifying.

And that's what the Lord does for his church.

So with just these images, these two images which are wonderful and incredible, the wind coming in and the fire landing on the people, we can see what is being shown to us here.

There is a new temple being formed.

There is a new people of God being established.

Just as when the Lord drew his people out at the Exodus, and there was a new identity to the people of God, that they were put in this place, this new land, freed from their enemies, delivered, and the Lord is their God.

He makes his covenant with them to give them their identity.

And then what happens as they are filled with the Holy Spirit?

As it goes on, in Acts 2 4, it says, And they were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.

They're filled with the Holy Spirit.

A taking up residence.

The Holy Spirit takes up residence in his church.

He lives in his people now.

This is a permanent indwelling that the Holy Spirit is doing.

He's saying, I'm moving in and I'm not leaving.

He inhabits his church.

That's what it means when it says, and they were filled with the Holy Spirit.

And then what happens is the Holy Spirit immediately starts to affect their speech.

The Spirit and the Word are always working together.

That's what makes new worlds.

Because that's what made our world in the first place.

It was the Holy Spirit who's hovering over the waters, who is working collaboratively at the command of the Father, who uses the Word of God to create the world.

Like you wonder, what is all this stuff made of?

You know?

Well, let's get as small as we possibly can, like atoms.

Then it turns out there's some, there's even smaller things than atoms.

You know, parts of atoms.

Atoms have parts.

And then there's there's other stuff.

I don't know.

And there's uh um, and we'd say, well, that's the small stuff, so that's gotta be made of that.

That's what it's made of.

No, we know, you know what it's made of?

You know what it's all made of?

It's made of the word and the spirit.

That's what makes it.

That's what makes it.

Maybe made of is the wrong way to say that, but that's the that's the cause.

That's the cause.

The word and spirit.

That's what makes new worlds.

And so when the spirit comes into his people, into the people of God, of course, what would it, the first thing that we should expect to see is that it would affect their words.

That they would begin speaking in ways that are making a new world.

And that's exactly what happens.

What happens is they they began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gives them utterance.

They're suddenly able to speak in other languages.

They're able to speak in just this variety of other languages.

Doesn't that sound great?

And now there's some witnesses that come in verses 5 through 6.

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.

Well, set the scene.

What the what what God's people look like right now is they're a scattered people, and they're scattered all over the empire.

And they've been scattered because they've been exiled.

But what we see here is at Pentecost, they're all gathered together as one people to celebrate this feast.

So the devout Jews are gathered together to celebrate the feast of Pentecost.

And now they're but but what that means is that these are Jews, but they are natives to all sorts of other countries.

They're natives of all over all these different countries, all these different languages.

They're all over the world, but they are here together.

You can you can tell, like, what does the sound of the Lord do?

What type of thing does it do?

It says, and at this sound, the multitude came together.

That's what the sound of the Lord does.

It can take a multitude and it can make it one.

That's what the sound of the Lord does.

What sound did they hear?

They hear a sound.

Uh probably my bet is uh there's a bunch of people gathered together in Jerusalem, and in one house in particular, there's a sound of a mighty rushing wind, and it's full of fire.

And so that gathers a crowd.

You know, that would gather a crowd eventually.

And when they come in, the strangeness of the crowd, they're bewildered because they're hearing the people are speaking to them in their own native language.

The language of their birthplace.

And so they are bewildered, they have this confusion, but notice it's a strange sort of confusion.

It's not a confusion of misunderstanding, it's a confusion of understanding.

Why do I get this?

Why does this make so much sense to me?

Why why is that why is the things that these people are saying, who I seem to have nothing in common with, I have no language in common with them, why do I understand them?

See, it's a it's a strangeness of a confusion of understanding.

Now, across the empire, uh basically everybody would have spoken Greek.

This is the language of commerce.

Everybody would have spoken Greek.

Thanks to Alexander the Great.

He makes everybody, every it's the international trade language, and so everybody speaks Greek.

And these Jews, who are devout men, likely would have spoken Hebrew or Aramaic.

Hebrew and Aramaic are very similar.

It's sort of like um English pre-Shakes and post-Shakespeare, is one way to think of Aramaic and Hebrew.

It's like an unsystematized Hebrew.

So they would have spoken then.

Those two things.

Greek because they were citizens of the empire, or maybe not citizens, but they lived there in the known world, and Hebrew because they were devout Jews.

But that's not what they're hearing them speak in.

What they're hearing them speak in is their native tongue.

Not the language that they spoke in the synagogue, not the language that they spoke it in their trade, the language they spoke with their parents and their family at home.

They're hearing their native tongue.

That's the wonder.

It's not that they could all understand each other.

You know, they had ways of understanding each other.

They could have spoken Greek together.

I got to spend some time in Malaysia, and there's everybody speaks m three languages in in Malaysia.

It's incredible.

And English is one of them because international trade language.

And then they'll speak Malay, and they'll often speak either Chinese or Hindi.

And they go back and forth between these languages like crazy.

They all have these.

But then when it's just Chinese-Malay together, ah, we can just speak Chinese.

You know?

I mean, I didn't feel that.

I just I was like, hey, international trade language.

Let's get back to that one was more of what it was like when I was in the room.

But for them, it's, you know, it seemed like speaking their native tongue.

And so that's what they're hearing.

Listen, listen to all the nations.

Luke wants us to see this, see, see the wonder of their understanding.

There's Parthians and Medes and Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome.

Both Jews and proselytes, means people who've converted to Judaism, Cretans and Arabians, we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.

Look at what's happening to all these, this diversity of nations.

They hear the apostles and the people gathered with them who had received the Holy Spirit telling in their own tongues the mighty works of God.

It's not a miracle that's taking place in the ears of the hearers.

It's a miracle that's taking place in the voice of the newly baptized with fire church.

It's a voice miracle.

But they're able to hear it because what's being communicated to them is in their own tongues and what's being declared the mighty works of God.

Now, which mighty works of God?

I I it's not named in particular, but if I had to guess, I think that they were probably talking about the one that just happened.

If I were to guess, they would be like, hey, why what's going on?

We heard the loud noise and the it looks bright in there, brighter than normal in there.

What was go what was going on?

And then they would explain in their own language.

You know, the Roman would come up and they would say, like in Italian, you know, that there was here's the uh you, you know, Italian stuff about what was going on.

It was, well, you know how the Lord Jesus had been baptized, had told there was the prophecy that we'd be baptized with the Holy Spirit and with fire, and that the Jesus came into the world.

And and you know, he died and resurrected, and he ascended into heaven, and before he ascended, he told us to wait in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit to come in that great rushing wind that you heard, and that fire that you saw.

That was the Holy Spirit.

And I can tell that one of the miracles of it is it seems that I'm able to talk to you in your own native tongue, and I can tell that you're getting it.

And somehow I'm saying it right in this glory, this glorious thing that has taken place.

I'm telling it to you, and you're hearing it like it's the folk tale of your own people.

Yet it's your first time hearing it.

That's the way the gospel breaks into the world.

It is told to all the nations of the world, and they hear it in their own language.

Here is the story that is the story of your people, told to you in your own language, passed down like a folk tale.

It's your story.

He's the the this multitude of nations, this multitude of nations that are that are gathered together here are told the mighty works of God, and they hear it, and they're saying, This is not, here's the way that they're hearing it.

This is not just the story of a crazy thing that happened to those people.

This is the story of my people.

This is my people's story.

That's what it means.

So they're declaring to them that the mighty works of God.

So after Noah leaves the ark, that mighty rushing wind comes.

You know, just before that, actually.

It's not, it's before that.

So there's the wind that comes, like we already talked about, dries up the ground, and there's time for Noah to leave the ark.

Noah leaves the ark, and then the Lord enters into a covenant with Noah.

What the Lord tells Noah in Genesis 9, verse 1 says, And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

Genesis 9:1

And they might think, you know, is that plan still in motion?

The be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth plan?

Because I don't know if you remember the last year where there was a world and now it's all wiped away.

You know.

The Lord enters into covenant with them.

And he tells Noah and his sons, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth.

This is exactly what he had told Adam and Eve right when they were made.

Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth.

We've talked about this a lot, but God loves glory.

God loves glory.

And so what he likes to do is he likes to make something glorious, and then he likes to say, Oh, this is great.

Now more.

So he likes to take things from glory to glory.

He loves glory, and that means he loves when there's more glory.

And so he makes Adam and Eve, and they're glorious, they're made in his image, and then he creates in them this glorious capacity to make more people in his image.

And he says, Yes, do that.

He blesses them and says, Be fruitful and multiply.

I want glorious things like you to cover the earth, to rule the earth and subdue it in my image.

That's what the Lord is like.

That's that's what God's like.

And it makes sense.

Like, you know, you've heard, you've you know about fairy tales and things.

If you were to go, if you had an option before you, between a um uh, let's say a pile of gold, like a pot of gold, and uh or a um uh a chicken that laid golden eggs.

Well, you know the fairy tales, which one do you choose?

Yeah, you choose the chicken that lays the golden eggs.

You just want you don't just want the pot of gold.

You want the thing that makes the gold.

So the Lord is the same way.

When he makes, when he makes things, he's like, I he's like, yeah, I want glorious things, but I also want the glorious things that make glorious things.

That's more glorious.

It's more glorious.

And so that's the way that the Lord creates, that's the way that he creates the world.

So then after the flood, he goes to Noah, and he says, that same plan for there being more glory, do that same plan.

Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth.

That's the command that he's given in chapter 9.

And then in chapter 10, we get what it we get what's called the table of nations.

Chapter 10 lists out the 70 nations which descend from the sons of Noah.

The seventy nations, it's it's a way of saying, all the nations of the world descend from Noah and his sons.

Now, if we remember to just one chapter before where we heard the command, be fruitful and multiply, fill the whole earth.

And then the next chapter, we see a list of 70 nations that are spreading out into the whole earth.

Then we you should think when you're reading the Bible, like, great, good, good, this is happening.

Looks like they did what the Lord told them to do.

This is a good thing.

The table of nations, that there are these 70 nations that come from the sons of Noah, this is good news.

That's good stuff happening.

It's more glory.

More glory that's happening.

And then you keep reading and you get to chapter 11.

So we chapter 9, be fruitful, multiply.

Chapter 10, 70 nations.

That's it, you know, nations are a lot of people.

70 nations have come from the sons of Noah.

They're spreading out over the whole world.

Things are going great.

And then chapter 11, we get to chapter 11, and then we hear this plan that the people have hatched.

And this plan is, you see this big field?

And I say the others said, Yeah, yeah, this big field.

What if we gathered together everybody, all the nations of the world?

We gathered all the nations of the world together, and instead of spreading out, multiplying this glory throughout the world, instead of spreading out into the world, we just gathered together and we built this.

I've got this new technology, this new brick technology.

You know, remember at the last World Fair where we came up with bricks?

This is gonna change things.

And I think we can use these bricks, and we can use them to create a tower that ascends into the heavens, and then we'll make a name for ourselves.

Our identity we will give to ourselves.

We can build the glory of our unity from the ground up.

And so they hatch this plan for a one-world government, a glorious utopian vision of the future, absolute unity, absolute unity of mankind, a oneness of mankind, and we all speak the same language, and we all have one aim, get that tower higher, they would chant together.

And they would all chant, they would all perfectly understand because they all spoke exactly the same language and they all wore orange.

They said, We will make a name for ourselves, and the Lord sees this, and he sees that what's behind all of this is that humanity is trying to create an identity for themselves as a glorious people by building it from the ground up.

And that if they can just make this tower connect to the heavens, connect to transcendence and meaning and glory, then they will know that they had a true purpose, a true identity.

They were a real, glorious people.

They need not spread out over the whole world.

Instead, they would have this absolute unity.

And what the Lord does is the Lord comes down to their great magnificent tower.

He comes down to the tower, which means it couldn't have been that high.

And when the Lord comes down to the tower, he confuses their languages.

Because he sees in the absoluteness of their unity they are disobeying.

They are in fact ignoring the identity that the Lord had given them as people.

They are ignoring the one who does give them a purpose and a mission and therefore an identity, the one that already comes down from above.

And so he confuses their languages, and they are unable to complete the tower, and the nations then spread out over the whole world.

And we see that this in Genesis 11, 9, it says, 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.

And so this diversity of their languages is like a curse, you see.

They can they they have this, it's like a there was this coherence of the tower, and then they s they decompose into this diversity of languages, and they can't experience the unity of humanity together anymore.

They're incommiserable to one another.

They can't understand one another.

They are bewildered.

I'm sure that day was a bewildering day, but it was a bewilderment of bewilderment.

It was not like the day of Pentecost, which is a bewilderment of understanding.

And so look now with this backdrop of here's where the nations come from.

The nations come from this command to glory of the people of God, but they they become such a diversity that it's decomposition.

There's no possibility of unity among the nations.

And when they try and bring that together of their own accord, it leads to that same sort of scattering.

The tyranny becomes a scattering.

That's why those always go together.

That's why tyranny and disintegration always go together.

Because of Babel, that's the way the Lord made the world.

And so they are confused and scattered like a curse.

But among all of these nations that are confused and scattered like a curse, what happens is the Lord chooses one man, Abraham.

And he chooses Abraham and he says, I'm going to make of you a nation.

And of you, your nation is going to be a blessing to all the nations of the world.

So there's one nation that he deals with.

The other nations, he doesn't deal with them in the same way.

He doesn't give them his law, he doesn't give them his word, he doesn't reveal himself to them.

He reveals himself to one nation in all the world.

One nation that has the people of God.

But this nation becomes scattered because of their disobedience.

They become scattered among all the nations of the world.

And this story happens at a point like that.

They're all scattered among all the nations of the world.

They have their own native tongues, no longer commiserable to one another.

But look what the Holy Spirit does.

The Holy Spirit comes down from above.

He lays his spirit on his church.

And of this multiplicity, he makes them one.

But look how he does it.

He doesn't make them one by giving to them one shared heavenly language.

That's not what he does.

He doesn't sort of recreate a babble or something with that sort of like tyranny of oneness that we might imagine.

Instead, what the Lord does is he empowers his church to communicate the good news of the Lord to all the nations of the world as if it were their own story.

Because it is.

Because it is.

How could the story of Jesus Christ, the one man from one nation, be the most important story of all the nations of the world?

The reason is because it comes down from above.

What makes unity in a body?

We think that unity in a body comes about by agreement from the parts from below.

That if we all get together and we all think the same thing and we all speak the same language and we all have the same aim up in the heavens, then we will be able to have a true identity.

We'll be able to wrest from the heavens what the meaning of our lives is.

But we can't.

That's not where identity comes from.

Identity comes from above.

Oneness always comes from above.

You know.

El Toro Loco, the monster truck.

We all we we all these disparate parts, we submitted ourselves to it, to this backflip that this monster truck did.

A monster truck doing a backflip.

Are you not entertained?

We all submitted ourselves to this plain act of glory, to the glory of it.

And in in receiving this identity from something that we submitted ourselves to, we became one.

We became monster truck fans.

All together in that thing.

That's because identity comes from above.

Identity comes from the head.

Identity comes from the top down.

Now, why is it that there, but how can there be an identity that comes from the top down that doesn't destroy the glory of the parts?

There's only one that can do that.

You see, what he does is he doesn't come to the strangeness of this that I want us to see in all of this, why it's the it's this beautiful image of the unity and diversity problem, of the one and the many problem.

It's because we Christ is high enough.

He's high enough above all the nations, to where all the nations of the world can say, He is the Lord of me.

All the nations in the world say, He is our God.

All the nations of the world will be Christian nations.

Do you see it?

He doesn't destroy the nations.

He doesn't turn them into some monolith.

There is an uncock uncontacted tribe in the Amazon right now, so I'm told.

Never been there myself, of course, that would make them a that's right.

So how do we know these things?

There's.

And I could show I could show up in the Amazon, learn their language, you know, by the help of the Holy Spirit.

They've had no contact before.

I could share the news of the gospel with them.

And they this will happen one day.

This will happen for them one day.

And they will hear the news of the gospel from this stranger whose life is so different, they might as well be from another planet.

How different they are.

And they would hear that in their native language, and they would, this the Holy Spirit would work in such a way where they will say, that's my story.

That's the story of my people.

Now, how could that possibly be?

How could that possibly be?

Because it is the story of their creator who came to save them.

It is the story of not just a man who rose very high above other men.

That's not what Jesus Christ is.

He is God who came down to us.

He is the one who can preserve the diversity of all the nations of the world, and at the same time be the king of their kings, be the Lord of their lords, so that all the nations of the world would be as their nations, speaking their languages, demonstrating the glory of their diversity, and they would all be able to say with one voice, although perhaps in different languages, but with one voice, say, Christ is Lord.

It is his death that brings me life.

This was always the story of my people.

This is my story.

He is the one who came to be our salvation.

And then there'll be this bewilderment.

This bewilderment is as as the gospel goes out, there's this bewilderment of this hearing of news.

News, you can hear it in the word, is new to the people who are hearing it.

You know, it's their first time hearing it.

We're sharing this good news.

And then when this good news is heard, because it is the gospel of Jesus Christ, the truth of God come to rescue his people from all the nations of the world, they would hear it and be bewildered and say, How do I understand this?

I've heard nothing of this before, but gosh, I know I need to be saved.

I know I need rescue.

I know I need God to come get me.

I know that fundamentally I needed the heavens to come down to me if I had any hope at all in the world.

And the news that we have to share in Jesus Christ is the heavens have come down.

And they have given us a spirit which amongst this grand multiplicity of the nations of the world, there is a unity that is above them all, and it is only found in the Lord Jesus Christ.

It is not a tyrannical utopia.

It's higher than that.

It's the glory of all the nations of the world being brought into the kingdom of heaven.

There's no other story like that.

That's why there's no other faith that moves like Christianity through the nations of the world.

Nothing else looks like that.

Do you know what?

Do you know what I'll put it like this, this is perhaps rather a harsh way to put it, but you know what Muslims wear.

You know what they dress like.

Because no matter where in the world that religion moves, they dress like the Middle East.

The largest Muslim country in the world is uh is a Southeast Asian archipelago.

And you know what it looks like?

Pick a country in the Middle East.

Pick a Muslim country in the Middle East.

Looks exactly like that.

They'll dress the same.

You know what Christians dress like?

What do people dress like?

Look at the nations of the world.

Look at the nations of the world.

Bringing their glory in.

There's nothing like this.

It has to be high enough.

It has to come down from above.

Shown to us at Pentecost.

Lord Jesus Christ.

Final point, as I'm going long on a day where you guys don't have anything to do.

If this is comprehensible across the nations of the world, this same story, the same gospel of Jesus Christ, I promise you, can be comprehensible to your family and to your friends and to your neighbors, where this feels more distant than the uncontacted tribe in the Amazon.

Do you know what you have?

Do you know the news that you have to share?

Jesus has come.

He is seeking his people from all the nations of the world.

This is a strange nation compared to where this story started.

He is seeking his people here.

Proclaim to them the mighty works of God.

Trust that the Spirit will bring a bewilderment of comprehension.

And here's what the story will sound like for people around us.

It will be like, I looked everywhere.

I went to the Amazon.

I did ayahuasca in the Amazon looking.

You know?

And this was just next door to me.

This was next door to me the whole time.

This sort of glory that the Lord was seeking.

Share the glories of God.

Be confident in what you have.

The Holy Spirit will attend it and expect there to be brought a bewilderment of understanding.

All right.

Holy Father, we pray that you would pour out your Spirit into our church that we might proclaim the mighty works of God, that you might make this glorious news comprehensible to our family, our friends, to those of us that do not know the gospel, have not seen the glory of what it means to be saved in Jesus Christ.

Lord, that you would make it comprehensible, that there'd be a bewilderment of understanding.

Lord, this can only be brought about by the power of your Holy Spirit.

Pray that you would strengthen us and give us boldness to share the wonderful news that you have given to us, and that we would expect your Holy Spirit to bring this glorious understanding.

That we might know that you can, because Lord, you've done it for us.

You've done it for us.

How could this be my story, our story?

Lord, because you've given it to us by your Holy Spirit.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.