The New World Order: The Reversal of Babel Text: Acts 2:1-13
Introduction: The Great Unscrambling
Human history is a story of two cities, two projects, two spirits. The first is the city of man, founded on rebellion and pride, and its defining architectural project was the Tower of Babel. The spirit of that project was a frantic, grasping attempt at a man-made unity. "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" (Gen. 11:4). This was a declaration of war against the cultural mandate to fill the earth and subdue it. It was a clenched fist raised against the sky, a demand for a one-world government, a monochrome humanity, all speaking one language and all in unified rebellion against God.
God's response to this arrogant project was not to send fire from heaven, but to send something far more disruptive to their plans. He sent languages. He scrambled their speech, and the result was confusion, division, and the scattering He had commanded in the first place. Babel was God's judgment on a false, coerced unity. It was a mercy, really, keeping man's collective sinfulness from reaching its full, tyrannical potential all at once.
For millennia, the world has lived in the shadow of Babel. We have been scattered, divided by language, culture, and tribe. But God had a different kind of city in mind, the City of God, and a different kind of unity. And in our text today, on the day of Pentecost, we witness the inauguration of this new project. Pentecost is not simply a strange and fiery event in the early church; it is the formal, public, and glorious reversal of Babel. At Babel, God used many languages to scatter men in judgment. At Pentecost, God uses many languages to gather men in salvation. This is not the establishment of a new one-world government headquartered in Jerusalem. It is the establishment of a catholic, which is to say universal, church, a spiritual kingdom that will advance, not by the sword of coercion, but by the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, spoken in every tongue.
What we are about to see is the birth of the new humanity. This is the moment when the promise of the Father, the Holy Spirit, is poured out, equipping the church for its global mission. This is the sound of the starting gun for the Great Commission.
The Text
And when the day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues like fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance. Now there were Jews living in Jerusalem, devout men from every nation under heaven. And when this sound occurred, the multitude came together, and were bewildered because each one of them was hearing them speak in his own language. So they were astounded and marveling, saying, “Behold, are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we each hear them in our own language in which we were born? Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the district of Libya around Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs, we hear them in our own tongues speaking of the mighty deeds of God.” And they all continued in astonishment and great perplexity, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others, mocking, were saying, “They are full of new wine.”
(Acts 2:1-13 LSB)
The Divine Invasion (vv. 1-4)
We begin with the setting and the sudden arrival of the Spirit.
"And when the day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues like fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance." (Acts 2:1-4)
Nothing in God's economy is accidental. The timing here is precise and pregnant with meaning. Pentecost was one of the three great pilgrimage feasts of Israel. It was the Feast of Weeks, celebrating the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, fifty days after Passover. Jesus, our Passover Lamb, had been sacrificed. Now, at the harvest festival, God was about to bring in the firstfruits of His new creation, a harvest of thousands of souls. The disciples were gathered, obediently waiting as Christ had commanded. They were "all together in one place," a picture of the unity that the Spirit would empower.
Then comes the invasion. It is "suddenly," from "heaven." This is not a phenomenon bubbling up from below; it is a power descending from above. It comes with two powerful sensory signs: a sound and a sight. The sound is "like a violent rushing wind." Wind, in both Hebrew (ruach) and Greek (pneuma), is the same word for Spirit or breath. This is the creative breath of God that hovered over the waters in Genesis, the breath that entered the dry bones in Ezekiel's vision. This is the sound of re-creation. It "filled the whole house," signifying that this new work of the Spirit would be all-encompassing.
The sight is "tongues like fire." Fire in Scripture is a symbol of God's purifying presence and His judgment. John the Baptist had prophesied that Jesus would baptize "with the Holy Spirit and fire" (Matt. 3:11). Here, that prophecy is fulfilled. These are not literal flames that would consume them, but a visible manifestation of the Spirit's power. And notice, the tongues were "distributing themselves," and one "rested on each one of them." This is a profoundly individual and yet corporate event. The Spirit is not just given to the apostles as a new clerical class. He is given to each believer. This is the democratization of the Spirit, the fulfillment of Moses' desire that all the Lord's people would be prophets (Num. 11:29).
The immediate result is that "they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues." The filling of the Spirit is not a second, optional blessing for the Christian life; it is the essential equipment for it. And the first evidence of this filling is speech. The Spirit is given so that the church might have a voice, so that it might testify. They spoke in "other tongues," which the context makes clear were real, human languages they had not learned. The Spirit was giving them "utterance," which means He was providing the content. They were not babbling; they were declaring "the mighty deeds of God" (v. 11).
The Global Audience and the Great Reversal (vv. 5-11)
Now Luke, the masterful historian, pans out from the upper room to the streets of Jerusalem, where God has sovereignly gathered the perfect audience.
"Now there were Jews living in Jerusalem, devout men from every nation under heaven... Parthians and Medes and Elamites... we hear them in our own tongues speaking of the mighty deeds of God." (Acts 2:5, 9, 11)
God had arranged for this moment. Devout Jews from all over the known world were in Jerusalem for the feast. This was a representative gathering of the nations. When the sound from the house spilled out into the streets, this diverse multitude came running. And what they encountered was bewildering. They were not hearing a new, universal language like Esperanto. That would be man's solution. No, they were each hearing their own native language. A Parthian heard Parthian. An Egyptian heard Egyptian. A Roman heard Latin.
This is the genius of the miracle. The curse of Babel was the confusion of language that led to division. The blessing of Pentecost is the clarification of the gospel in every language that leads to unity in Christ. God is not erasing ethnic and linguistic distinctions; He is redeeming them. He is sanctifying them by making them vehicles for His praise. The new humanity in Christ is not a melting pot where all distinctions are boiled away into a bland uniformity. It is a symphony orchestra, where every distinct instrument plays its part in glorious harmony. God wants to be praised in Parthian and Arabic and English. He is taking back the nations that were scattered in judgment and is now gathering them in grace.
The crowd's reaction is astonishment. "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans?" Galileans were the hillbillies of Judea, known for their thick, uncultured accent. That these men could be speaking the sophisticated languages of the world was a manifest miracle. This was not a trick. It was not ecstatic utterance that someone later interpreted. It was a direct, supernatural impartation of languages for the purpose of proclaiming the gospel. The content was not gibberish; it was the "mighty deeds of God." The Spirit was empowering the disciples to do what the whole church is called to do: declare the excellencies of Him who called us out of darkness into His marvelous light.
Two Reactions: Wonder and Mockery (vv. 12-13)
The scene concludes with the crowd divided into two camps, a division that the gospel always creates.
"And they all continued in astonishment and great perplexity, saying to one another, 'What does this mean?' But others, mocking, were saying, 'They are full of new wine.'" (Acts 2:12-13)
The first group is honest. They are amazed, perplexed, and they ask the right question: "What does this mean?" This is the posture of a heart that God is preparing. They recognize that a supernatural event has occurred, and they want to understand its significance. Their question is the perfect setup for the sermon Peter is about to preach, where he will explain exactly what it means.
The second group responds with mockery. "They are full of new wine." This is the response of cynical unbelief. When confronted with a miracle that cannot be denied, the hard heart does not surrender; it sneers. It seeks a naturalistic explanation, no matter how absurd. To suggest that drunkenness could enable uneducated men to speak a dozen foreign languages is ludicrous, but the alternative, that God is at work, is intolerable to them. This mockery, however, has a deeper, more sinister significance. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 14, quoting Isaiah, that tongues are a sign of judgment for unbelievers. When God speaks to a people in a language they cannot understand, it is a sign that He is about to bring judgment upon them through a foreign nation (Is. 28:11-12). For the devout foreigners who heard the gospel in their own language, Pentecost was a sign of salvation. But for the unbelieving residents of Jerusalem who heard only a cacophony of foreign sounds, it was an ominous sign of the judgment that would fall upon that generation in A.D. 70, when the Latin-speaking Romans would surround the city.
Conclusion: The Continuing Pentecost
So what does this mean for us? The spectacular signs of Pentecost, the rushing wind and the tongues of fire, were unique. They were the birth announcement of the new covenant age. But the reality of Pentecost, the pouring out of the Holy Spirit upon the church, is a continuing reality. We do not need to seek another Pentecost, because the Spirit has been given. He indwells every believer. He has been poured out.
The mission of Pentecost is also our mission. We are called to be witnesses to the mighty deeds of God. The miracle of tongues has, for the most part, been replaced by the hard work of missions, of learning languages and translating the Scriptures. But the goal is the same: that every tribe and tongue and nation would hear the gospel in their own language. The reversal of Babel continues every time a missionary preaches in a new dialect, every time the Bible is translated for another people group.
And the response to our message will be the same. Some will be perplexed and ask, "What does this mean?" To them, we must be ready to give an answer, to preach Christ crucified and risen. Others will mock. They will call our faith a drunken delusion, a psychological crutch. But we must not be deterred. The Spirit who descended at Pentecost is the same Spirit who empowers us today. He has been given to make us bold, to fill our mouths with the mighty deeds of God, and to build that great, global city whose builder and maker is God. He is gathering His people from every nation, and He will continue to do so until the earth is filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. The project of Babel will end in ruins. The City of God will stand forever.