Word of Salvation – September 2025
Pentecost: Babel Revisited
Sermon by Rev. John Westendorp on Acts 2:4-12
Scripture Readings: Acts 2:1-21, Genesis 11:1-9
Singing: BoW 344 O Spirit of Life, O Spirit of God
P/H 401 From Greenland’s Icy Mountains
BoW 343 Eternal Spirit, God of Truth
Theme: The sign of tongues at Pentecost considered in the light of the confusion of tongues at Babel.
Introd: On the day of Pentecost there were several outward and visible signs.
Signs that testified to an inward and invisible event.
People such as we of flesh and blood cannot see the Spirit of God.
So the Lord gave the sign of wind… tongues of fire…
and the speaking of the apostles in other tongues
to show that something very important is happening.
For the present we wish to consider just that sign of speaking in tongues.
That’s important because there’s a great deal of confusion about it today.
It’s repeatedly seen as a sign that must still be in the church today.
A sign that someone is filled with the Holy Spirit.
We need to look at this not as a PERSONAL sign but as a sign of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ.
Only in that way do we gain a proper appreciation of it.
A] THE MIRACLE OF COMMUNICATION IN A WORLD OF BROKEN COMMUNICATION.
- Let’s consider first of all at what actually happened on the day of Pentecost.
The Spirit of God is poured out and a sign occurs that is really A MIRACLE OF COMMUNICATION.
In vs.4 we read: They began to speak in other tongues as the Sp. enabled them.
Now we aren’t really sure exactly what that involved.
Experts differ.
Some say they were given the ability to actually speak in languages they had never learnt.
Others, that this is the ecstatic speech that Paul speaks of as a gift elsewhere,
normally unintelligible to others but here understood.
I’m convinced we don’t have enough information to know for sure & it doesn’t matter too much.
It is the effect that is important for us here in Acts 2.
We read that there were present people from “every nation under heaven”.
It was a day when people came from everywhere to be in Jerusalem.
A pilgrimage day. And people came from every point of the compass.
(Perhaps a little like the audience at the Olympic Games).
Luke even mentions the various nations from which they had come .
And then amazing thing is this:
That mixed crowd sees this group of people, recognising that most of them are uneducated Galileans.
A bunch of country bumpkins, we would say.
And yet every one hears them speaking in their own language or dialect.
And they are UTTERLY AMAZED.
Here is a miracle of communication taking place
such as never happened before and such as will never happen again till the end of time.
And it doesn’t matter what one thinks of the whole issue
of the place of speaking in tongues in the church today…
all agree: Here is something absolutely unique.
The Spirit is poured out on the church… the apostles speak…
and that whole cosmopolitan bunch of thousands of people
all hear them speaking in their own language.
- It’s almost impossible for us not to think here of Babel. And of Genesis 11.
That story of a rebellious world ignoring God’s commandments.
At creation God had said: Fill the earth and subdue it.
God’s command was to populate the earth and develop it.
But then the flood had come and destroyed everything.
So there was as great a need as ever for humanity to fill the earth and subdue it.
But instead of obedience to God’s command there is disobedience.
Here is a world population… all of one common language… living together.
And they are determined to keep it that way.
“Let’s stick together.
Let’s build a city with a tower that can be seen for miles around
to help us to stay here in this one place.”
So the Lord God had to come and force the issue.
In some mysterious way He confused their language.
Communication breakdown… on a massive scale.
Permanently affecting the history of our world.
And we still live with the results of Babel today…
just ask language students what they think of having to study other languages.
What a disaster for mankind.
What misunderstanding and trouble it has led to.
But God used that confusion to spread men and women to the furthest parts of the globe
and so fulfil God’s command to fill the earth and subdue it.
So Babel has – symbolically – become The Story of man’s defiance of God.
The story of man’s rebellion and the consequent breakdown of communication.
- Now here on the day of Pentecost for just a brief moment
things are again the way they were before Babel.
For just a little while it is the way it was before it all went wrong.
The Holy Spirit comes… the apostles speak… and suddenly – no language barriers…!
Communication is restored between people from different nations.
It seems to me that there are two reasons for that:
FIRST of all because PENTECOST is such a great event
in God’s wonderful plan of salvation for this world.
Jesus had already achieved salvation.
By His death and resurrection He had won for us WHOLENESS.
He came to save sinners and to do far more than that…
to bring about a whole new creation… to redeem this world.
And now the H. Sp. comes to apply that salvation that Jesus has already won.
The Holy Spirit’s work is to apply that wholeness to all our brokenness and confusion.
Jesus saving work… applied by the Spirit of God… also to this world of language barriers.
So at Pentecost we are given a quick glimpse into the future.
Just a glance into God’s grand new world
where all our brokenness is restored also our broken communication.
So that today we might know that in Jesus there is an answer.
Today we still have to live in a divided world that lives after Babel and with the consequences of Babel.
And there are divisions that run very deep… nation doesn’t understand nation.
Communication breakdown on a grand scale is still part of life.
And that breakdown of language filters down into our families.
Husbands who don’t understand their wives… wives who fail to understand their husbands
and parents who don’t understand their children.
But Pentecost gives us a glimpse into the way it once was.
And it gives us a quick look at the way it will once again be one day.
More than that… it shows us what is now possible.
Where the Spirit of Pentecost and the Spirit of Jesus Christ comes
there miracles of communication take place again.
B] CONTENT: GOSPEL OVER AGAINST PROUD HUMAN AUTONOMOUS WORDS OF MAN.
- But there is also a second reason for this sign.
To see that we need to think not only of the restored communication.
We need to look at the CONTENT of that communication.
The problem is that it’s so easy for us to get side-tracked.
We could get terribly excited about the phenomenon of speaking in tongues.
And yet never ask the question that the crowd asked in vs.12:
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
And we must ask that or we’ll never understand what this sign on Pentecost day is all about.
Because EVEN if we say:
“Well, the meaning is that at Pentecost God begins to undo the confusion of Babel….”
then we’ve only HALF ANSWERED the question.
Ask yourself: What was it that was said when these people spoke in tongues:
The answer is that they spoke about the great deeds of God.
IOW: They spoke about God’s salvation… His saving deeds in Jesus.
Later when the Apostle Peter explains it all he doesn’t even mention the tongue speaking…
…he hardly even mentions the H. Sp.
Instead he preaches Jesus Christ and Him crucified, risen and ascended.
The point is that what is being communicated at Pentecost is the Gospel.
It is almost as though God has issued a new commandment as He did at creation.
As though God was saying: Fill the earth and subdue it with the gospel.
Have dominion over the world and claim it in the name and power of Christ.
- Before (when I spoke about languages) it was easy to see a connection between Babel & Pentecost.
There was a contrast.
OTOH a dramatic and terrible breakdown in communication.
OTOH a miracle of communication across national and language boundaries.
Yet even now as we think of the CONTENT of this communication
there is again a very clear connection.
If we look at what is actually said, there is again a staggering contrast.
On the day of Pentecost there is the GOSPEL. The great saving deeds of God.
Or if you like: God’s answer to the problems of mankind.
At Babel we also have an answer to the problems of the human race.
The only trouble is: it’s the very opposite of God’s answer.
At Babel it is the gospel of humanism… arrogant man solves his own problems.
Leave God out of it, thank you very much. We can do it.
Here is man…feeling threatened in a world in which the flood just occurred.
Man… alone… vulnerable in a strange and hostile world.
So they put their heads together and make their declaration of independence.
We’re going to build a big city with an enormous tower.
Because if we all stick together and all put our weight behind it we’ll survive.
We’ll achieve our own social stability.
We’re going to make a name for ourselves… that’s what we’ll do!
Overcome our own problems in our own way.
Please don’t think that this kind of philosophy ended at Babel.
Hitler’s proposed Thousand Year Reich was based on the same principle.
We’ll make a name for ourselves and build a master race to solve all the problems of humanity.
And the philosophy that keeps the United Nations together
isn’t much better either.
Some even fear that the UN’s philosophy is the view of the Antichrist
who in the last days will try once again to bring about one great world order.
- But at Babel God shows us that it won’t work.
God breaks down the towers and the cities that we build in defiant arrogance against the Almighty.
Hitler’s regime didn’t even last ten years.
And the confusion of Babel is nowhere more evident than in the U.N.
And even the predicted antichrist’s scheme for world-government is doomed.
Because at Pentecost God has shown us that there is only one answer
for the needs of all people everywhere, regardless of nationality or language.
The only way in which mankind can be saved is by the gospel.
And the only way in which to build strong societies is by submission to Jesus.
On the Day of Pentecost God’s answer to our need is sounded out to the world.
Here is the beginning of Christian missions.
The spread of the gospel to other lands and in many languages.
On the day of Pentecost they heard God’s answer in a dozen or more languages.
Today that gospel answer that stands over against the false gospel of Babel
is heard in a thousand languages and dialects.
IOW: those tongues are a sign of the age of missions
the time when God’s answer is heard all over the world.
C] THE GOAL IS UNITY IN CHRIST’S KINGDOM INSTEAD OF MAN-MADE UNITY.
- Perhaps one final aspect of this sign of tongues ought to be considered.
What also stands out is UNITY.
In fact, in the whole Pentecost event, unity is central.
After all, one of greatest barriers to unity is the barrier of language
and the barrier of communication.
Pentecost foreshadows UNITY.
All of them together hear the one message.
And later we read that 3000 are converted.
And we may certainly assume that they represented a cross-section
of all those various language groups represented there that day.
So there is a unity… but at heart it is really a unity in the gospel.
Only those really found it, who not only heard what was said
but who also believed what was said.
So the saving work of Jesus not only brought them to God…
it also brought them together in unity as Christians.
- At Babel the central concern was also unity… human unity.
There already was one language… they wanted to be one in everything else.
They said: “There is strength in unity.”
If only we are one in purpose and stay together as one people
only then will we make a name for ourselves and succeed.
The trouble is that theirs was a false unity.
Unity based on disobedience to God and rebellion against His will.
So God drove them apart. He allowed disunity via language breakdown.
I believe that in many ways that was an act of God’s goodness & grace.
It was so that humanity might learn that unity based on human achievement is an idle dream.
So that people might long for true and lasting unity that only God gives.
A unity that is central to the whole message of Pentecost.
- Pentecost is the story of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
And the Spirit is Spirit of unity. He unites us.
He unites us first of all with Jesus Christ our Saviour.
But as He unites me to Christ… so He also unites you to Christ.
He makes us one in Christ Jesus and so He gives us a wonderful unity.
We truly are ONE IN THE SPIRIT.
And that sign of tongues points to it.
Pentecost is in many ways: The birthday of the Church.
It’s AN UNREPEATABLE EVENT.
One church made up of people from every nation under heaven… from many languages.
True, in this life, by our sin, we in many ways spoil that unity.
Yet it is a true unity. True in so many, many different ways.
We see it in missions: Our churches here sharing in gospel work in Indonesia and Timor and India.
We see it in the sacrament of baptism: One baptism brings us all into fellowship.
We experience it at the Lord’s Supper Table as we together eat one bread.
So the sign of tongues reminds us that today we may celebrate that there is in the gospel of Jesus
an answer to the confusion of our world and to the disunity of Babel.
But to enjoy it we need to embrace the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Amen.