The Spirit Of Babel

Sermon Transcript

I love reading and studying in the book of Genesis. It’s often referred to as the book of beginnings, not only because it’s the beginning of all creation, but there are many things within this first book of the Bible that is the first mention of certain themes or the beginning of something new that God is doing. We find the beginning of mankind in the first few pages of the Bible. We find the beginning of marriage. We find the beginning of family. We find the beginning of worship and of religion. We find the beginning of the nations beginning to develop. We find the beginning of sin that man brings into the world, and we also find the beginning of God’s plan of redemption. All of these things are found in the book of Genesis, but they are themes that will carry on throughout the rest of the Bible, many of them not finding their culmination until the very last book, the book of Revelation.

You know, the Bible is really the most unique Book in all of the world. If you consider the fact that it’s not just one book, it is 66 books that are compiled together that were written by some 40 different authors over a period of some 1500 years, yet with all of that variation, it is all connected. It is actually one unit. It has many themes to it, but it has one central message and does not deviate from the centrality of what God is trying to get across. I mean, the Bible is a book of history; but it is God’s book of history, and we often refer to it as His story. We are going to see that tonight because what we are going to find here in Genesis 11 is something transpire, something that begins in the book of beginnings but is going to carry on throughout Scripture and is not going to find its culmination until the book of Revelation. What we’re going to see is how man gets so many things wrong; but God, in the end, is going to turn it all around and make it right.

Follow along with me. We’re going to begin in Genesis 11:1, “Now the whole earth had one language and one speech. 2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there. 3 Then they said to one another, ‘Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly.’ They had brick for stone, and they had asphalt for mortar. 4 And they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.’ 5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. 6 And the LORD said, ‘Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. 7 Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.’ 8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city. 9 Therefore its name is called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.”

I have no doubt that this is probably a familiar story to many of us, something that we maybe have heard many times over the years. For some of you this might be fairly new. Even those of us that are familiar with the story of the Tower of Babel may not fully grasp the time in which it is happening here in the book of Genesis. It is always important for us to consider the context in which a passage is found because it kind of sets the framework for our understanding of exactly what is happening, so we need to understand what has taken place up until the time in human history, up until the time that this event is actually taking place.

Indulge me for a moment as we go back to the very beginning when God not only created the heavens and the earth but planted man and woman in the Garden of Eden. He created an environment where they could thrive. He gave them some instructions to live by there in that garden, but man quickly abandoned God’s plan, violated His command, and brought sin into the world, as we all are fully aware of. God created a perfect world, but man brought sin into it.

God didn’t wait long before He began to reveal to man His plan, and that plan was to redeem. Genesis 3, man brings sin into the world, but we don’t even get out of Genesis 3 before God gives them a promise. When He placed a curse upon the serpent, the one who had deceived Eve, He makes a statement in verse 15 that the seed of the woman, meaning that one day one of her offspring, would be bruised by the serpent but ultimately would crush the serpent’s head. That is the first promise in the Bible of the coming of a Savior who would in fact suffer but would overcome and would be victorious—the first promise that God gave us of His redemption. But even after that promise, we find that man does not stop sinning because in the very next chapter we find the offspring of Adam and Eve sinning as Cain killed his brother Abel. The sin continues to get worse so that by chapter 6 we find that the wickedness is so deep in the world that God decides to start over by sending a Flood and saving one man and his family through that Flood that through that family He would start humanity over again, hopefully on the right track.

That would not work out either as we are going to find. In Genesis 10, which is the chapter just before the passage I just read, I need to make some reference to some things that took place. Genesis 10 is referred to oftentimes as the “Table of Nations.” Why does it do so? Because this is God starting over, starting over with Noah and his family. Noah had three sons, Ham, Shem, and Japheth. These three young men grew up, got married, began having children of their own, and Genesis 10 kind of reads like a phonebook because it’s a list of names, it’s a list of people groups and so forth, and it’s called the “Table of Nations” because it is giving us an outline of all of the generations that began to come from the family of Noah. As they began to expand on the earth, they began to spread out just as God had intended them to do.

There is a key individual here in Genesis 10 that has a lot of relevance for us before we dive into Genesis 11 and see what takes place there, an individual by the name of Nimrod. I need to bring him up because he is not mentioned in Genesis 11 in the story of Babel, but he actually is the instigator of the events that take place there in Babel. So, if you’ll turn with me to Genesis 10, probably back one page, I want us to take a look. Beginning in verse 8, it tells us a little bit about this man, Nimrod. Verse 8, says, “Cush begot Nimrod; he began to be a mighty one on the earth. 9 He was a mighty hunter before the LORD; therefore it is said, ‘Like Nimrod the mighty hunter before the LORD.’ 10 And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. 11 From that land he went to Assyria and built Nineveh, Rehoboth Ir, Calah, 12 and Resen between Nineveh and Calah (that is the principal city).”

There are four things that I want us to make note of in regards to this man by the name of Nimrod. First of all, he was a significant strength and influence in the generation in which he lived because in verse 8 it tells us that “ . . . he began to be a mighty one on the earth.” You might’ve noticed as I read that passage that three times it mentions that he was mighty. It was a word in the Hebrew which meant strong, valiant, and a champion. It was a way for the Bible to describe that this was a standout man among his peers, and because of that he had quite a reputation. The people looked up to him and talked about him. We see that in verse 9 because there was a phrase that apparently was often stated about this man, Nimrod, “Like Nimrod the mighty hunter before the LORD.” We might consider him maybe the original Rambo or William Wallace or Hercules. He was a guy that when he would walk into the room everybody would become silent and just watch, What is he going to do?

Not only was Nimrod a standout, but we find that he was against the God of the Bible. How do we know that? In that phrase, “ . . . a mighty hunter before the LORD,” to our English ears we might see that as a positive statement, as if it was saying that this was a man who lived his life before the Lord. That phrase in the Hebrew actually means in the presence of. In other words, he was a mighty hunter in the presence of the Lord. But that doesn’t give us any more clarity other than the fact that that particular wording found in the original language could be interpreted one of two ways, and actually the two ways are literally opposites of each other. To say that he was “before the LORD” could mean that he was in the presence of God as an act of worship and reverence, or it could be that he was in the presence of God in absolute defiance against God.

The context is the only way that we can determine which is actually meant by that phrase, “ . . . a mighty hunter before the LORD . . . .” What we find in the context of our passage is that it was not in an act of reverence and worship, it was an act of defiance. We know that as well because Nimrod means rebel, so even his name itself tells us that he was a rebel at heart, and he was rebellious against the God who had created him.

Finally, I think that we need to note two of the cities that he built. It lists a handful of cities that he had a hand in building, including Babel. Babel being one, the other one you might recognize, a lot of those city names you probably wouldn’t be familiar with, but there is one that you would be, that is, the city of Nineveh. Not only did he have a hand in building Babel, he had a hand in building Nineveh.

Nineveh would later become the capital of the Assyrian Empire. Why is that important? Because Babel would later become Babylon, Nineveh would become the capital of Assyria, which are the two nations in the Old Testament, both of which made war with God’s people Israel, conquered them, and took them captive. There’s a pattern that is here. Here is a man who was mighty, but he is mighty against the Lord. He is a builder, and the cities that he built would ultimately oppose not only the God that created them but the people of God that were on earth. That then brings us to our story here in Genesis 11, knowing that Nimrod was the individual behind what is going to transpire or take place here in this story.

Let’s go ahead and read the first four verses again. It says, “Now the whole earth had one language and one speech. 2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there. 3 Then they said to one another, ‘Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly.’ They had brick for stone, and they had asphalt for mortar. 4 And they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.’”

Understand, like I have said, this is a time period in human history where population is exploding. Generations have emanated from Noah and his sons, and now there are, who knows, tens of thousands, maybe even more, individuals that are on the earth, and they are beginning to spread out, which is exactly what God had commanded would happen, not only once but He did it twice. After He had created Adam and Eve and placed them in the Garden, He gave a command to Adam, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” So, they were to have offspring, and they were to begin to spread out over the face of the earth. Then, when God started over with Noah and his family, He reiterated that desire to Noah in essentially the same words in Genesis 9:1. God has made it very clear to humanity that His intention is that they would reproduce and begin to spread out over the face of the earth and inhabit the entire planet.

But there were a group of individuals that had made it as far as Shinar, which happens to be in present-day Iraq, in case you want a reference point. We’re talking about an area between the Tigris River and the Euphrates River, both of which are in present-day Iraq and is often referred to as the Fertile Crescent in the area of the world where humanity began to expand out. It’s referred to as a Fertile Crescent because back in that day for sure it was a very lush land, very good land for them to decide to set up a household, which is probably the reason why they chose Shinar to be the place that they wanted to begin to live. The people there, with Nimrod as their leader, decided to build a tower there.

Oftentimes we probably envision in our mind what that tower might’ve looked like. We might picture something like the Eiffel Tower, which is in Paris. We might think of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, although maybe theirs didn’t lean so much, but we envision maybe some kind of a structure like that. It probably was nothing like either of those things. Most scholars believe that the structure that they decided to build was more like a ziggurat. If you’re familiar with a ziggurat, it has the shape more of like a pyramid. We’re very familiar, we’ve seen pictures of the pyramids in Egypt with their four sides all leaning into a point on the top, and a ziggurat is very similar, although it does not come to a point. It usually has a flat surface on the top where a temple would be built, so on each side of the ziggurat there would be steps that would be leading up to this temple and oftentimes, more often than not, it was created as a place of worship. It was a place where the pagan gods would be honored and worshiped in whatever form the people and their religious beliefs happen to be.

In fact, in that area in Iraq right now, there are some twenty or thirty of the ruins of these ancient ziggurats that are still there visible in varying degrees of decay for sure, but they still exist. That was probably the type of a structure that they were inspired to build.

The tower itself, though, is not really the issue. It’s the reason why they decided to build this tower, and that’s found in the second part of verse 4. Let’s look at that again. When they say to each other, “ . . . let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.” You see, the decision that they made to build this tower had a purpose. Their purpose, and this is where the problem is, is selfish. Two things we notice: they say, “Let us make a name for ourselves,” that is the desire for self-exaltation; and then they make the statement, “lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth,” that is self-determination. What that means is that they wanted to make a name for themselves. They wanted to lift up themselves, full of pride, and then they did not want to spread out across the earth like God had instructed them to. They wanted to make their own decisions for their own life, self-determination, “This is my life. I want to do what I want to do, and I don’t want anybody telling me what I’m supposed to do. I want people to know who I am, and I want to do what I want to do.” That essentially was the reason why they were going to build this tower, “We want people to know us, and we want to live our lives the way that we want to live our lives.”

This is in absolute defiance against God. They were not interested in honoring God. They were not interested in acknowledging Him and giving Him the praise that He is deserving of. Instead, they wanted to make a name for themselves, and they were not interested in doing what God had commanded them to do—to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. They said, “No, I would rather stay right here. This is where I want to remain. I’m not going anywhere.”

This has been man’s problem since the very beginning. We see it here in Genesis, but we’ve seen it throughout human history as well, that man wants himself to be acknowledged and he wants himself to make his own decisions. He wants others to recognize him so that he can be full of himself, and he wants to do what he wants to do without anybody telling him otherwise.

Sometimes that comes out in a false religion, and these ziggurats were usually religious temples, but they were not based upon the God of the Bible, they were based upon the false gods, the pagan gods of that time period. Every time that we deviate from the God of Scripture, how God has revealed Himself, we’re going to do one of two things: either we are going to choose to create God in our own image, meaning we will continue to believe in God, but we will characterize that god the way that we want that god to be, and that is essentially making God in our own image. That’s exactly what many people even do today. They believe in God. They will tell you that they believe in God, but you ask them what God is like and they will describe what they believe God is like. You will find very quickly that the god they are describing is just like they are. Their god loves the things that they love; their god hates the things that they hate. Their god allows the things that they would allow, and their god overlooks the things that they choose to overlook. They’ve essentially created God in their own image.

Or, they make the determination that there is no God at all, there is no God to be worshiped, “We’re the only ones here, and we can live our lives any way that we want to because we get to make the rules.” This we often call atheism, we also call it naturalism because naturalism is the notion that there is no God, that we are here by accident. We are just a product of the universe, and we can make our own choices. Or, humanism, which essentially is saying that humans are the pinnacle of all of the natural world, and we can determine for ourselves how we’re going to live our lives.

Back in 1933 the first Humanist Manifesto was written. It was a time in history where a group of individuals came together and decided that they wanted to articulate what their belief system was. It was essentially that there is no God, we get to make our own choices, we get to do our own things, and our destiny is up to us, how we’re going to live. In 1973, Humanist Manifesto II was written, and there’s even been a third one written after it. I want to summarize their beliefs in just a couple of statements that are found in the second Humanist Manifesto. They said, “We can discover no divine purpose or providence for the human species. While there is much that we do not know, humans are responsible for what we are and what we will become. No deity will save us, we must save ourselves.”

That really kind of sums up the attitude I believe of those at Babel. There was no god that they had to really report to. There were no rules that they really needed to follow. They wanted to make a name for themselves, self-exaltation; they wanted to do what they wanted to do, self-determination. That was the whole reason for this building is that they would do what they wanted to do and they would make a name for themselves.

But then we find God’s response, verse 5, “But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. 6 And the LORD said, ‘Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. 7 Come let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.’ 8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city.”

It’s interesting that it tells us that God came down. That really is an anthropomorphic phrase, and what I mean by that is it’s a way to attribute to God human characteristics. God is not a human, and it might sound weird to us that God had to come down to the city to actually see what was going on because Scripture makes very clear to us that God is omniscient, which means He knows everything already. It also tells us that God is omnipresent, which means that God is everywhere at all times. Literally, God did not need to come down to see what was going on, God fully knew what was going on because He knows all things, and He didn’t have to go anywhere because He is everywhere.

Why is it that these types of terms are used? You find them not only here, but you’ll find them other places in the Bible where these anthropomorphic-type phrases or language is used in reference to God. It’s simply a way for us to understand God in a better way because the Bible will talk about, “the hand” of God. Well, God is Spirit; He has no hands. The Bible tells us “For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal to Him,” but God doesn’t have eyes because God doesn’t have any physicality to Himself. Sometimes the Bible will use these types of phrases in order for us to relate to them more.

I think in this case here, there might even be more to it. You see, I really believe God has a sense of humor that there are times in the Scripture that might sometimes go over our heads, or we miss it, that the Lord is expressing His sense of humor. I think this is a place that is actually taking place.

Why do I say that? I want you to think through what is exactly happening here. Here’s a group of men on the planet that decide to come together and they’re going to “make a name for themselves,” and they’re going to do that by building this humongous tower. They’re going to build the biggest tower that’s ever been built. They are making these bricks, and they have their mortar, and they are laboring and stacking one upon another. Slowly, over a period of time, this ziggurat, this tower, is getting taller and taller and taller. Why are they doing it? Because they want a name for themselves. They want to stand out. They want people, when they walk by, to say, “Hey, there’s that guy that built that tower.” They don’t want to acknowledge God. They don’t want to lift up His name, they want a name for themselves, so they are building this tower in defiance of God, not giving God the recognition that He is due. “We are going to build this tower up to heaven. We’re going to be able to reach heaven on our own. We will get there by ourselves. No deity will save us, we must save ourselves.”

Here they are building a tower up to the heavens, and then God says, “Well, I’m in heaven. From up here I can’t see anything. I’m looking down, and I don’t notice anything. I might have to go all the way down there to see what you’re talking about.” God comes down out of heaven, down to mankind, and, “Oh, there it is. It this the tower that you were so proud of? Is this what you think is going to reach up to heaven?”

We’re living in a day and age where I think that man is pretty proud of himself. There has been so many advances in technology, in industry. Things are happening in our world at such a rapid pace that I think in many ways man is getting very impressed with himself, so impressed that, “God is not necessary in our lives anymore. We’ve figured it out enough to make it on our own. We’re doing pretty good.” Well, if you look around the world, we’re not doing so hot. We’ve got a lot of technology. We’ve figured some things out, but in many respects all that has meant is that we have gotten more sophisticated at our sin. We’ve learned to sin in more creative ways because of the things that we have figured out how to do, but we’re not any better. In fact, in many ways we are even worse.

God comes down and sees what they are building. Then in verse 6, He makes a statement I want us to see, “And the LORD said, ‘Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them.” In part, that could sound like God is feeling threatened, that God in some way is threatened by man’s advances, that man has advanced too far and he’s getting a little bit too close to Me—His power, His knowledge, His understanding—is going to threaten My honor and My glory. That is not what is taking place at all.

What is being expressed by God is man has come together and they have one language, and they determined to work together on these things. When God says, “ . . . now nothing . . . will be withheld from them,” He’s essentially saying, “They are going in the wrong direction, and unless I step in, they are going to continue to go in the wrong direction with more fervor.” God now needs to interrupt the fact that again humanity is casting off the commands of God and going in their own direction, which is exalting themselves and determining that they’re going to follow their own will and not the will of God. What does the Lord do? He says, verse 7, “Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” So, God did just that, and instantaneously all of those people in Shinar, building that tower who spoke the same language, now couldn’t understand each other.

They couldn’t communicate with each other anymore, and that got so frustrating for them. It was God’s intent that they would get so frustrated that they would abandon what they were doing there in the city and that they would begin to spread out just like He had instructed them to do to begin with. God put an end to their ambitions in Babel. We might think that was then the end of it, story over. They planned something, it was a bad plan; God intervened, broke up the plan, and the plan was abandoned.

Remember, when I began this message, I said that there are many things that begin in Genesis that are carried on throughout the rest of the Bible. Though this attempt in Babel was thwarted at that particular time, the spirit of Babel would continue on. Fifteen hundred years later, there would be an empire in that same region called Babylon. Babylon would have a king named Nebuchadnezzar. Several books of the Bible described the power and the might of Babylon which was an outgrowth of the city of Babel, and the heart of Babylon was the same as the heart of Babel. We see that in their king.

In Daniel 2, King Nebuchadnezzar is ruling and reigning over his empire. One night, he has a dream. In that dream he sees this huge image, and the image has a head of gold, a chest and arms of silver, a belly and thighs of bronze. It has legs of iron, and feet of iron and clay. He wakes up from that dream, and he doesn’t remember the dream, nor does he understand what it meant, he only knew that it was signifiant. So Daniel becomes the man to interpret the king’s dream, and he interprets is accurately, “King Nebuchadnezzar, you are that head of gold, but after you is going to come another kingdom that is the silver chest and arms. After that, another kingdom is going to arise, and after that another kingdom is going to arise.”

Initially, Nebuchadnezzar honors the God of Daniel because he gave the right interpretation of the dream, but very quickly we find that Nebuchadnezzar turns the other way. Why? Because in the very next chapter he builds an image that is 90 feet tall, but it’s not the same image as was in the dream that was interpreted by God. He makes the entire image gold. Now, what is he saying when he does that? God told me what He is going to do, but I reject God’s way. I want my way. If I am the head of gold, I want to be from the head to the feet. He demanded that his entire empire would worship that golden image when the music was played, and we know the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, the three rebels that would not bow down to his image. You see, he was a proud man who wanted self-exaltation and self-determination, “I want to make a name for myself, and I want to do what I want to do. I don’t care what God said.” God essentially did to Nebuchadnezzar what He had done in Babel.

In Daniel 4, Nebuchadnezzar loses his mind. He goes insane, and God causes him to go insane because of his arrogance. For seven years, Nebuchadnezzar would live out in a field eating grass like an ox, and at the end of that seven years, God gave that king his mind back, and this is how Nebuchadnezzar responded, Daniel 4:34-35. He says, “And at the end of time I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my understanding returned to me; and I blessed the Most High and praised and honored Him who lives forever: For His dominion is an everlasting dominion, And His kingdom is from generation to generation. 35 All the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing; He does according to His will in the army of heaven And among the inhabitants of the earth. No one can restrain His hand . . . .” Nebuchadnezzar had to be brought to a place where he no longer was exalting himself, he now was exalting the God of heaven, and he had been humbled to the point of acknowledging that.

What would happen after that would be exactly as God said it would. There was another kingdom, the Medo-Persian Empire, that would come in and overtake Babylon. The golden head of the image would be no more, now it was the chest and arms of silver. But then another kingdom would overcome them, and another kingdom would overcome them. We might think that Babylon is now over for good, but that is not the case. We get to the book of Revelation, chapter 17, and “MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT,” is mentioned. You can turn there if you’d like to. I’ll make some reference to a few things that take place in Revelation 17 and 18, but “MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT,”—is described as—“THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.”

The events of Revelation are still future. These are things that have not happened yet, but isn’t it interesting that Babylon is mentioned in the future. Now, there’s been speculation as to what “Mystery Babylon” actually is. There have been some that have thought that “Mystery Babylon" means that in the end times, during the tribulation period, there is actually going to be a revived Babylonian Empire. You might remember, those of us who have been around for a few years, that Saddam Hussein, when he was in charge of Iraq, was actually in the process of trying to resurrect the Babylonian Empire. That came to nothing because he was executed, and that ended. But that only caused people to turn to other possibilities.

There have been some that think that “Mystery Babylon” is the Roman Catholic Church. There have been some that have thought it is actually the United States of America. I think the most likely way to understand what “Mystery Babylon” is is that it’s an evil world system that will be ruled by the Antichrist during the end times. It’s the spirit of Babel, the spirit of Babylon that is going to again permeate what is going to take place during the end times.

But what we find in Revelation 18 is that Babylon is finally, finally going to be put to an end. So, man’s rebellion against God, man’s self-exaltation, his self-determination, which began in the beginning of the Bible, we’re going to find by the last few pages of Scripture that God is going to bring it to an end. Revelation 18:21 says, “Then a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea, saying, ‘Thus with violence the great city Babylon shall be thrown down, and shall not be found anymore,’” and we can say, “Praise God! Hallelujah!” that man’s rebellion against his Creator will once and for all be brought to an end. What began in Genesis is going to end in Revelation.

I think that the spirit of Babylon is still among us. It is antithetical to God. It is in opposition, like Nimrod was, shaking its fist at the God who created them. Yet, at the same time, God is so patient and loving and gracious. There are times that God does judge, and we see that. We’ve even talked about it tonight. Adam and Eve sinned against the Lord, they got kicked out of the Garden. Humanity was rebelling against God, so God brought a Flood and wiped them out. Man decided to make a name for himself in the tower of Babel, God put an end to that as well. There are times that God does judge, but we should never forget the reality is that the main theme in Scripture is redemption, is that God wants to redeem mankind, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son . . . .”

There’s an amazing story in Acts 2, again I think a story that we’re familiar with but we don’t often make the connection to what we’re talking about tonight. In Acts 2 Jesus has been crucified. He has resurrected from the dead. He’s given last instructions to His disciples, in part it was that they were to wait in Jerusalem for the promise of the Father because the Spirit was going to come upon them—they were going to receive power to be witnesses to the world sharing the gospel. There they were waiting in Jerusalem as Jesus had instructed. Suddenly, as they’re praying, a mighty wind, the sound of a mighty wind is heard, and the Spirit of God comes upon those disciples that were gathered together.

Do you remember what happened? It tells us that they began to speak in tongues. Let me read for you real quickly a few things that are said there in Acts 2:6, “And when this sound occurred, the multitude came together, and were confused, because everyone heard them speak in his own language.” I want to pause there real quick. First of all, remember God confused the languages in Babel. Why? Why were the people confused? Because they could not understand each other. Now, it tells us that they were confused when they heard these disciples speaking in all of these various languages. Why? “ . . . because everyone heard them speak in his own language.” What had taken place in Babel confused everybody, they didn’t understand. But now, God is allowing them to understand in their own language.

What are they able to understand? It goes on, verse 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”—listen to this—“we hear them speaking in our own tongues the wonderful works of God.”

God is allowing all of these who in ages past had begun to speak different languages because of God’s punishment on those in Babel are now all hearing “ . . . the wonderful works of God,” in their own languages. Why? Because God wanted them to know the gospel. Peter would get up and explain what was taking place. He would share Christ with that mob, and what happened that day was what only God could do—three thousand people gave their lives to Christ. This is what it says in Revelation 5:9. This is to take place in the future, I want you to know, “And they sang a new song, saying: ‘You are worthy to take the scroll, And to open its seals; For You were slain, And have redeemed us to God by Your blood out of”—listen—“every tribe and tongue and people and nation.”

What I want you to understand is that what God began to do back in Genesis, by the time that Revelation unfolds, He’s going to bring it to completion; and in part, that is putting an end to the spirit of Babel, the spirit of rebellion against God as Creator, the spirit that is self-willed and wanting to do its own thing. That will be done away with. But out of every nation, every tribe, every tongue, He is going to assemble a body of believers that will be in the Kingdom of God that will worship Him and follow Him forever.

We are living in a day and age where we are seeing two things happen. We are seeing our world continue to express the spirit of Babel in exalting themselves and being self-willed, doing life their own way, either not acknowledging God’s existence at all or refusing to surrender or like Nebuchadnezzar they’re being humbled. They’re realizing that God is who He says He is. He’s not who I imagine Him to be, and He has sent “ . . . His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” Amen? Let’s pray.