There are some people, who, when they sit down to read a book, they like to go to the last chapter or the last few pages and read to see how the book ends. They believe if they know how it ends, then they can better enjoy the journey through the book. This morning, as we celebrate Pentecost and the giving of the Holy Spirit, and the ability of the Apostles to speak in the languages of those present in Jerusalem, we might come to realize that we are reading the end of the story of our text which takes us to the time that the languages were mixed and confused so that the people were scattered to populate the earth. Today we celebrate Pentecost which is the undoing of the Tower of Babel in our Old Testament reading.
Our text begins with the plot, and sin, verse one, “1Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. 2And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3And they said to one another, ‘Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.’ And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. 4Then 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.’” (v. 1-4)
A quick review of history is in order. In the beginning God created the world. On the sixth day of creation, the same day God created the dinosaurs, God created Adam and Eve, the first man and woman. Some time after creation, Adam and Eve sinned and brought sin, death and evil into the world. Sin and evil got so bad that God washed the world with a world wide flood. After the flood God told Noah and his family to spread out and repopulate the world. However, instead of the people going out and repopulating the world, they stayed in one place and grew to be a large number of people.
Now, getting to our text, our text tells us that the people wanted to “make a name for themselves,” that is they thought more highly of themselves than they should have. They wanted to make themselves known to the generations that followed them. They wanted to leave a legacy. They wanted to be thought of, even as gods. They did not want to “disperse over the face of the whole earth,” instead, they wanted to disobey God and outright sin.
Their plan was to build an everlasting monument to themselves, a monument that would draw people to Babel, to keep them at Babel and to perpetuate their idolatry. For our engineers, notice that their plan was to make bricks in a new and better way. They were not going to simply make mud bricks and let them dry in the sun which is how it was done before, instead they would make bricks from stone and bake them and concrete them together so they could build a taller and stronger structure, a structure that would last longer. Just a side note of interest, did you notice how, from creation, God had given them the wisdom necessary for this architectural ability. This engineering ability was not something that was “discovered” or learned, but was already in their DNA. When God created Adam and Eve He created them with all knowledge, with perfect knowledge and this is important as we will make note a little later.
God is God and He knows what is happening, He is, after all, omniscient. His answer to their arrogance is seen beginning at verse five, “5And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. 6And 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. 7Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.’ 8So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 9Therefore 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” (v. 5- 9)
It is interesting as our text describes God in terms of ‘coming down’ to see the city. God is omnipresent, that is He is always everywhere present, yet for the sake of emphasizing how little these “big headed” people really were, God ‘came down’ to this little earth, that He created, to assess the problem. Now, understanding that it is because the people have one language that they are able to carry out the evil intent and desire of their heart and so God’s plan to stop their behavior is to confuse their language. When God confused their languages, since they now spoke different languages and could not understand each other and could not communicate with one another, they had to abandon their project.
After the Lord confused their languages, the people had to find those who spoke their own language. Sorry for the image, but my first instinct is to think that this might have been something like a group icebreaker where everyone is instructed to go around and find people of similar eye color or hair color, or the like, except that with an icebreaker like this, everyone can speak the same language.
At any rate, after finding people who spoke the same language as they spoke, these people of various language groups dispersed, and as they dispersed they took with them certain dominant genetic traits. This is why we have the various cultures we have in our world today. This is natural selection, not molecules to man evolution. As the people who spoke the same language dispersed to certain parts of the world they took with them certain dominant DNA traits. Some took with them traits for certain dominant colors of skin, some traits for certain dominate shapes of eyes, some traits for certain dominate heights, and so forth. What the world calls the various races of the world, I believe, are better described as the various cultures of the world, I say this because God in His Word speaks of only two races, the believers and the unbelievers. So, our text for this morning explains the beginning of the various culture groups we have around the world.
As I mentioned earlier, today is Pentecost Sunday. In our Gospel lesson we hear Jesus promise to His disciples that He will send the Holy Spirit who will teach them all things and bring to their remembrance all that He has said to them. And so, He is encouraging the disciples to wait for the sending and their receiving of the Holy Spirit.
In the Epistle lesson we read the account of the day of Pentecost and the sending of the Holy Spirit. And just briefly, the celebration of Pentecost was a Jewish harvest celebration when the Jews were instructed to be in Jerusalem to celebrate, which is the reason so many Jews from the various parts of the world, speaking various languages were in Jerusalem. God took this Jewish celebration and gives something greater, the gift of the Holy Spirit. One of the most fascinating things about this is the timing, that God’s timing of the life, death and resurrection of His Son happened so that this Jewish celebration of harvest, this Pentecost celebration might coincide with the fiftieth day after Easter and His sending of the Holy Spirit, at just the right time.
And as we made note earlier, this sending of the Holy Spirit on these people who had gathered in Jerusalem at this time and who spoke different languages is the undoing of the Old Testament lesson and the reminder of God’s will to save all people.
So, what does this mean? Again, my contention is that what we read and hear is not coincidence and no surprise. Remember, it was immediately after Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden that God promised to take care of their sin. God’s promise to send a Messiah was given in Eden before there was a Jew or a Gentile, when there was only one people group, Adam and Eve. As we walk through the Old Testament, we note that although the promise of through whom, through which family line the Savior would be born was narrowed, the promise to save all people was never changed.
Following the flood, as at the creation of the world, it was God’s desire to populate the earth. At creation God told Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply and subdue the earth. After the flood God told the people to disperse and repopulate the world. Because the sin of humanity remained in Noah and his family, people continued to be born in sin and continued to sin. Sin is in our DNA, it is genetic. That fact that we are conceived and born in sin, that sin is in our DNA does not give us a license to sin, but it does explain our natural instinct and behavior. And this morning, we have our answer as to from where the various cultures, or as our world likes to designate them, the various races come, the tower of Babel.
We live in a world that is still infected by sin. We still think more highly of ourselves. We still seek to make a name for ourselves. Yes, we are still conceived and born in sin and we know that every inclination of our heart is evil all the time. We still need a Savior and that is why Jesus came, to be our Savior, to be our substitute, to give His life for us and for all.
Jesus came to do what we cannot do, to live perfectly, to obey all God’s laws and commands perfectly and He did, never sinning even once. Because He was born as one of us, a human being and because He never sinned, He was able to be our substitute. He took our sins, our sins of thinking more highly of our selves, our sins of thought, word and deed, our sins of omission and commission and He took them on Himself and paid the price for our sin. He suffered the eternal death penalty of hell for us, in our place and He died. But as we know the story, death and the grave had no power over Him because He rose victorious over sin, death and the power of the devil. And today we celebrate the sending of the Holy Spirit. It was the Holy Spirit who worked in the hearts and minds of the Apostles so that they finally understood all of what Jesus came to do and did. It is the Holy Spirit whose work today continues to point to Jesus. He is the one who works and gives faith through the means of the Bible as well as Holy Baptism. He is the one who stirs in us and gives us the words and boldness to proclaim His Word to all.
Again, and as always, God is the prime mover. And now, we know we are getting it right when we know He is the prime mover. God gives and does and we are given to and done to. God gives life and we are reminded of His giving of life at creation and personally at conception. God gives forgiveness of sins, and we know we have forgiveness as we hear His Word of forgiveness spoken to us. God gives life and salvation and we know we have salvation, again, as we hear His Word.
And again this morning we see God’s great love for us. God created all things out of nothing and His desire is to show His love for all He created. He showed His love in His promise to Adam and Eve to send a Savior. He showed His love in His attempt to cleanse the world with a flood and in His preserving Noah and His family. He showed His love in thwarting the plans of the people at the tower of Babel and the confusion of their languages so that they were scattered throughout the world. He showed His love in the giving of His Son and His Son’s life for us on the cross. Today He continues to show His love through His Word as well as through confession and absolution, Holy Baptism and His Holy Supper. God loves you so much, my prayer is that you continue to be given His love and that you will continue to be lavished with all the good gifts and blessings our Lord has to give as you make regular and diligent use of His means of grace. To Him be the glory, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
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