Sermon for the Feast of Pentecost - Gen 11:1-9

 

Pentecost

                                                                                      Gen 11:1-9

                                                                                      5/19/24

 

          Our congregation is blessed to have two men who will begin study at our seminaries in the coming school year.  But before they can officially become students, they both have some work to do.  Technically, Greek and Hebrew are prerequisites for being students at the seminary.  The seminaries teach these languages, but they are not for seminary credit. They are pre-seminary classes.

          Joe Musolino will start Greek this summer at the Ft. Wayne seminary.  Chris Atlee learned Greek while in college.  But once the school year starts, both Joe and Chris will have to learn Hebrew.  When it is all done, they will have invested significant effort in being able to read the languages in which God’s Word was written.

It would certainly be easier for everyone if there was only one language.  However, we learn in our text this morning why there are multiple languages in the world.  It is judgment upon sinful man’s pride.  These languages are part of the division that sin has created in our world. Yet on the Day of Pentecost the risen Lord poured forth his Spirit in order to unite all people in himself.

Our text begins by telling us that after the flood people had the same language.  As they migrated from the east, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.  They decided to apply their technology in this setting. They said, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.”  In place of stones, they had the bricks that they made, and they had bitumen for mortar.  They had everything they needed to build.

And so they said: “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”  In their sinful pride they decided to build a city with a great tower. They were determined to make a name for themselves and prevent themselves from being dispersed.

Technology continues to be a false god in our day.  Science is held up as a god that can solve all our problems.  In areas such recombinant DNA and cloning people don’t ask whether they should, just because they can.  Babies killed in abortion are harvested for the raw materials used in research.  And the benefits of technology become a false god. The internet delivers the pornography that is viewed by some many.  The phone in our hand becomes the most important object of our attention as we view social media, watch YouTube videos, and listen to podcasts.

We learn in our text that Yahweh came down to see the city that was being built.  He said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.”   A united humanity would have few limits in accomplishing its sinful will. 

So God said, “Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech.”

With the language barrier in place, the people left off building the city. Yahweh dispersed them over the face of the earth.  We learn that name of the place was called Babel, because there Yahweh confused the language of all the earth.

          The confusion of the languages was God’s judgment against against sinful pride.  And in their sin people have embraced these differences in order to hate and harm others.  They have made war upon one another and have even tried to wipe out whole groups of people who were different.

          It is this sin that cuts us off from God.  We may not have engaged in war or genocide, but hate is in our heart too.  And that’s not all that is in there.  Jesus said, “For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.

All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

          However, God did not abandon us to sin.  St Paul told the Galatians, “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.”  God sent his Son into the world as he was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. 

Christ was born under the law and lived perfectly as he fulfilled it for us.  The law of God threatens it curse against all who break it and sin against God. However, Jesus freed us from the slavery of the law’s curse.  He did so by being cursed in our place.  Paul says, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us--for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.’”

God did this because we were cut off from him by our sin.  But now through the death of Jesus God has brought us to himself.  Paul told the Corinthians, “All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.”

Jesus Christ died on the cross and was buried.  But on Easter God defeated death as he raised Jesus from the dead.  The risen Lord was with his church for forty days as the apostles and others encountered him both in Judea and in Galilee.  He told them not to depart from Jerusalem because they would receive the Holy Spirit.  He said, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

At the end of forty days, Jesus ascended into heaven.  He withdrew his visible presence as he was exalted to the right hand of God.  For ten days the believers waited.  Then on Pentecost there suddenly came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.  Divided tongues as of fire appeared on each of them.  They were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages.

There were living in Jerusalem devout Jews from all parts of the Mediterranean and Near Eastern world.  They were amazed to hear these Galilean individuals speaking in their own language as they proclaimed the mighty works of God.  In response to the accusation of scoffers that they were just drunk, Peter declared that what was happening was a fulfillment of God’s word.  As Joel had prophesied, God was pouring out his Spirit.

Peter declared that this event had been caused by Jesus Christ.  Christ had been delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God as he was killed at the hands of lawless men. But death could not hold him.  Peter announced: “This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses.

Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing.”

          On Pentecost the risen and exalted Lord poured forth the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit is the continuing presence of the Lord, and the power of the Gospel. The Spirit carries out the end time work of God as he calls people to faith.  The Holy Spirit has called you to faith through the word and baptism.

          Jesus had said that the Spirit would enable the disciples to be his witnesses in Judea, and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.  The global nature of this work was indicated right from the start as the Spirit enabled the disciples to speak the good news about Jesus Christ in the many different languages that were present in Jerusalem.

          Those hearing these different languages in Jerusalem were Jews.  But in the Book of Acts we see how God led his church first to proclaim the Gospel to Samaritans, and then to Gentiles.  God made it known that Jesus Christ was the Savior for all people. 

          Sin brought division among people – divisions of language and nationality and ethnic groups that have resulted in hatred and strife.  Jesus came to reconcile us to God.  Through the work of the Spirit he also reconciles and unites people to one another in his Church.

          Through baptism, the Spirit joins all believers together as the body of Christ.  Paul told the Corinthians, “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body--Jews or Greeks, slaves or free--and all were made to drink of one Spirit.”  People of all languages have now been united in Christ.

          The Spirit has joined all believers together in Christ.  We are united by faith in the Lord Jesus.  Paul told the Colossians, “Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.”

God had taken Israel into the covenant and made the nation his own. But he did so in order work through Israel and bring a blessing to all nations.  Now in Christ, God has included all believers in his people.  The Gentiles have been grafted into Israel. The Church is the Israel of God, which is made up of both Jews and Gentiles. 

God’s people is no longer located in a particular strip of land on the eastern end of the Mediterranean.  God’s people is no longer tied to one ethnic heritage.  Instead, through the work of the Spirit God’s people includes all who have been baptized into Christ.

Diognetus was a Christian writer in the second or third century A.D.  He said that Christians are not pagans or Jews.  Instead, they are a “third race.”  He captured the fact the Spirit poured out on Pentecost has united us in a way that has no parallel.  Christians have been united by the Spirit in something that is completely not of this world.  We are God’s creation in Christ.

Because God has done this for us; because God has done this to us, it now directly impacts the way we treat one another.  Paul told the Colossians, “Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.”

The Spirit has joined us together as those who are forgiven in Christ.  Through the work of the Spirit we also now forgive one another. We show compassion and kindness towards each other. We choose to be patient as we deal with one another.  The Spirit of Christ poured out on Pentecost leads us to walk in love.

Sin brought division and hatred into the world.  It put us under God’s judgment.  Through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has reconciled us to himself. On Pentecost the risen and exalted Lord poured forth the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit has united peoples of all languages and nationalities into one people – the people of God.  He has joined us together as the body of Christ.  We live by faith in Christ and show love to one another as we look for his return in glory on the Last Day.