Babel and the Baptism in the Holy Spirit

(Acts 2:1-13)

why it matters

Have you noticed that folks in America today are more willing than they have been in years to talk about paranormal phenomena, alien abductions, spirit beings, and other weird supernatural or preternatural stuff? The hip new term is “high strangeness.” It strikes me as pretty funny that high strangeness is hip and new, because the Bible has been full of high strangeness for about 4000 years. Of course, what’s different about the high strangeness in the Bible is that these stories are true.

One of the best-known of the weird stories in the Bible is the story of the tower of Babel. slide Actually, though, even a lot of Christians don’t realize how strange it really is, or how important. You see, the story of the tower of Babel is really only Part 3 of the tale of the fall of man, in which humankind get more and more ensnared in perverse and destructive entanglements with spiritual beings, to our own everlasting ruin. In important ways, the entire Bible, and particularly the gospel of Jesus Christ itself, are all about God’s response to that Fall and its devastating impact on the nations of mankind. Believe it or not, the nations that Luke names in Acts chapter 2, where we are this morning, are mentioned at exactly this point in the story of the Baptism in the Holy Spirit precisely to show us God’s gracious, redemptive plan for all the nations and for each one of us this morning – and for every person you’ll run across this week. There is a direct line running through millennia of supernatural entities, straight from the garden of Eden thru the tower of Babel and thru the day of Pentecost to us. Now THAT’S high strangeness.      S&R

Acts 2    1 When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. 2 And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them. 4 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

5 And there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men, from every nation under heaven. 6 And when this sound occurred, the multitude came together, and were confused, because everyone heard them speak in his own language. 7 Then they were all amazed and marveled, saying to one another, “Look, are not all these who speak Galileans? 8 And how is it that we hear, each in our own language in which we were born? 9 Parthians and Medes and Elamites, those dwelling in Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya adjoining Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, 11 Cretans and Arabs—we hear them speaking in our own tongues the wonderful works of God.” 12 So they were all amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “Whatever could this mean?”

what they need to listen for

3 massive realizations that we come to as we meditate on this passage of scripture

 
the first realization
The baptism in the Holy Spirit was where God began the reversal of Babel

For starters, let’s be sure we remember the story from Genesis 11:

1 Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. 2 And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3 And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. 4 Then 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.” 5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. 6 And the Lord 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. 7 Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” 8 So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 9 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.

You may have heard before that what happened in Acts 2 was a reversal of Babel. That is true, but not in the way you might have heard. As we saw last week, the tongues spoken in the baptism in the Holy Spirit at Pentecost did relatively little to undo confusion or enable communication. It was  a sign to a select group of Jews, and it did its work precisely by letting them hear the sound of languages they didn’t understand. Tongues did not reverse Babel by reversing the confusion of languages that happened at Babel. Rather, the baptism in the Holy Spirit began the reversal of Babel by announcing five things:

Old Covenant Israel was now under God’s judgment
New Covenant Israel was now receiving God’s Holy Spirit
God’s true Israel was now open to all the nations
the Enemy’s authority over the nations was now ended
from Pentecost on, Christ would be reclaiming the nations by the power of his Holy Spirit. X2

And if you’re thinking to yourself, “What does ‘the Enemy’s authority over the nations’ even mean?” and “What does that have to do with Babel,” give me a few minutes to make a few quick points that I believe will address those concerns.

God handed the nations over to the false gods in the Babel event

I said earlier, “the story of the tower of Babel is really only Part 3 of the tale of the fall of man, in which humankind get more and more ensnared in perverse and destructive entanglements with spiritual beings, to our own everlasting ruin.” If you wondered what I meant by that, let me explain.

Part 1: Genesis 3 tells the story of the garden of Eden, in which the first man and woman are deceived and overthrown by a talking serpent who we later find out is actually a dragon, and the chief of all evil spiritual beings. That’s strange.

Part 2: Genesis 6-9 tell the story of how humans again got entangled with spiritual beings in illicit ways and brought Noah’s flood upon the world. That’s what all that stuff about the sons of God and the daughters of men was about in Genesis 6:1-4 – quite possibly the single strangest tale in the whole Bible.

Part 3: Chapter 10 shows us the nations descended from the sons of Noah spread across the Ancient Near East slide, This seems to be in obedience to God’s command in Gen 9 that they fill the earth once again. Genesis 11, however, gives us the back story to chapter 10 and the Table of Nations. Trace down the connections between that passage and what the prayer of Moses in Deuteronomy 32 says about God’s primordial allotment of the nations to false gods at Babel, and Paul’s description in Romans 1 of God’s judicial handing over of the nations to the Wicked One and his crew, and a picture emerges. Genesis 3-11 are one long tragic tale of humanity becoming deeper and deeper in thrall to the dark forces that Paul calls the principalities and powers. This not just high strangeness: this is catastrophically debased weirdness. And it is at the core of our enslavement to sin, the flesh, and the devil right now. The Babel story shows us a just and righteous God judging Noah’s family (us) for our pride and rebellion and idolatry by handing them over to the authority of the gods they were so fascinated with. Now we are all dealing with the consequences of it every day.

God handed Israel over to the nations and their gods in the Exile

Most of the Old Testament is one tragic and repeated tale of ancient Israel idolatrously chasing the gods of the nations, until in the end God simply judges them by handing them over to the nations… Egypt… Assyria… Babylon… Persia… Greece… Rome… centuries of slavery to pagan empires and their pagan gods

the one true God in righteous judgment handed his people over to the nations and their Gods

The Christ came to conquer the gods and reclaim the nations

Mat 16 Jesus stood next to a pagan shrine in Galilee dedicated to one of the pagan sons of God
declared his church would be built on the rock of his identity as the true Son of God
promised the gates of hell would not be able to resist the onslaught of his armies, his church

1 John 3:8    Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.

Our Lord Jesus did bind the Strong man (Jesus in Mat 12, Mar 3, Luk 11) He did put the powers to an open shame on the cross (Paul in Col 2). The great dragon is bound while the Lamb reigns on his throne (John in Rev 20). But Christ’s victory over the gods of the nations does not mean there is nothing left for us to do in this great war. We must plunder the strong man’s house. As Paul puts it in 2Co 10, For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, … thoughts in our own minds and all the warped imaginings of the world

The devil and his minions will continue to rule the nations that they have held captive since Babel for as long as we allow them to. The LORD called ancient Israel to display his holiness to the heathen nations and their pagan gods, but the ancient people of God just wanted to live the lifestyles of the nations and worship the gods of the nations. Our Lord commissioned us to disciple the nations, but all too often we’re far more interested in pleasing people and imitating them.

codependency = fear of man

 
the second realization
The baptism in the Holy Spirit was the prophesied regathering of Israel from the nations

recent passage in Zechariah, numerous other prophecies where the promise was repeated

regathering in modern day OR
regathering under Zerubbabel ca 525 BC OR
regathering at Pentecost and on into today

2:9-11 nations almost identical to Gen 10 nations
regathering Israel, reclaiming the nations

 
the third realization
The baptism in the Holy Spirit was where God gave his Holy Spirit to Israel and the nations

the first promise of the baptism in the HS: rez day

John 20 19 On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” 20 When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. 21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” 22 And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”

BitHT was always intended to do so much more than just pronounce judgment on OC Israel and predict the swift end of OC Jerusalem and its Temple and bestow the promised gift of the HS on NC Israel: open Israel to the nations and send Israel to the nations: undo Babel, reverse its judicial decree and take the nations back from the Enemy
real spiritual warfare

The baptism in the Holy Spirit was the prophesied regathering of Israel from the nations

The baptism in the Holy Spirit was where God gave his Holy Spirit to Israel and the nations

conclusion

today the Holy Spirit is calling us to the nations
to make them disciples of Jesus, Israel’s Christ
to teach them to observe everything he commands
the path to the nations begins in our neighborhood