The scattered by sin are united by the Spirit.

 

Sermon for Pentecost, June 8, 2025

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Genesis 11:1-9  The whole earth had one language and a single vocabulary.  ²As people traveled in the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they settled there.  ³They said to one another, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.”  They used mud brick instead of stone for building material, and they used tar for mortar.  ⁴They said, “Come, let’s build a city for ourselves and a tower whose top reaches to the sky, and let’s make a name for ourselves, so that we will not be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”  ⁵The Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the people were building.  ⁶The Lord said, “If this is the first thing they are doing as one people, who all have one language, then nothing that they intend to do will be too difficult for them.  ⁷Come, let’s go down there and confuse their language, so that they cannot understand one another’s speech.”  ⁸So the Lord scattered them from there over the face of the whole earth, and they stopped building the city.  ⁹It was named Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of the whole earth.  From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth. (EHV)

The scattered by sin are united by the Spirit.

Dear friends united in Christ,

            Our sermon text takes us back to a time that is amazingly close to the days of the Great Flood.  Many Bible scholars believe that this event took place within three hundred years after Noah and his family departed the ark, so it is very likely that Noah was still alive, though perhaps late in his life.  Now, we might expect that the people living at that time would have had a great fear of the Lord.  After all, the eyewitnesses to the destruction of the world were living right there with them, still able to tell them about the mind-boggling changes God’s judgment had poured out on earth, and Noah and his family were well able to share God’s instruction concerning how they should live.

Of course, we can look at our own country and see how much things can change in just a few hundred years.  What was once a nation dedicated to Christianity, and one of the few with freedom to worship the true God without restraint, has been fast transforming itself into just one more heathen nation.

When Noah’s family left the ark, “God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them: ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.’” (Genesis 9:1)  God wanted the people He had mercifully saved to be a new start for mankind on the earth.  It was God’s desire that they would spread across the planet, and that they should live in peace and harmony with each other and with Him.  They were to know of God’s grace for Noah and his family while saving them through the flood and be reminded of the Savior the LORD would one day send to redeem all mankind.  Instead, these couple chapters of the book of Genesis tell us of how quickly the people abandoned faith in the true God to follow their own desires.

Unfortunately, even with Noah instructing them, the people determined to elevate themselves to the level of a god.  Rather than continue to encourage their fellow men to spread across the globe in order to honor and worship God alone, They said, “Come, let’s build a city for ourselves and a tower whose top reaches to the sky, and let’s make a name for ourselves, so that we will not be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.” 

Their bold defiance shows what is in the nature of each of us.  As soon as man has a little success, he starts to think he has achieved it on his own and often desires to build monuments to his own glory.  That is what we see at Babel.  Those people were no longer humbly satisfied to follow God’s plan.  It wasn’t good enough to believe in the life and salvation God offers.  They wanted to manufacture their own glory.

Now, indeed, they were a talented bunch.  In a place that had few stones to build with, they manufactured stones by burning clay bricks in kilns and glued them together with bitumen.  There are examples of this type of construction that have survived for thousands of years in that area.  However, that tower would never take them to heaven.  Of course, that really wasn’t their desire.  They were interested in being famous and powerful here on earth.  They didn’t think they needed God.  They certainly didn’t want to follow His instructions.  They’d rather achieve their goals on their own, and rather than allow others to follow God’s plan, those arrogant men decided it would be better to control their neighbors and keep them from spreading across the land.

Looking back at this account of the days after the flood, it really doesn’t seem that different from our world, does it?  Few people really want to hear what God has declared or think it is important to follow the instructions God has given.  Most of the people would be happy to go blindly their own way.  Almost all of us readily judge other people and, if given the opportunity, would rule over them with whatever power and cleverness we possess.  Yes, sin is still very prevalent in the human nature, so even Christians struggle with these temptations.

As God observed those people beginning to build their city and their tower of power, He decreed that it wasn’t good that they could cooperate so well in disobeying His commands.  As we would expect with all mankind descending from one family, everyone on earth spoke the same language.  The Lord said, “If this is the first thing they are doing as one people, who all have one language, then nothing that they intend to do will be too difficult for them.  Come, let’s go down there and confuse their language, so that they cannot understand one another’s speech.”

How would you like to wake up tomorrow morning and discover that every other family in your neighborhood spoke their own strange language?  How would you like it if you couldn’t communicate with anybody but your own close family?  It would make working at your job terribly difficult, and back then, it also made it just about impossible for any one person, or even a group, to control the rest of the population.  “So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city.  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.”

Now, some might complain or question why God brought that difficulty upon the world, but in His great mercy, the Lord God had rescued mankind from destruction in the flood, and He wasn’t about to let that rescue go for naught.  Rather than allow mankind to make gods of themselves, God brought confusion to their communication so that life wouldn’t seem so easy and people would return to seeking His help, for left on our own, we lose our way and instead of heaven gain only destruction. 

This account connects with Pentecost because at Pentecost, the Holy Spirit restored communication skills to His Church, enabling the spread of the Gospel in a wide variety of languages, telling sinners around the world about Jesus and all He has done to rescue us and them from sin, death, and the devil.  In the miracle of Pentecost, we see how God is working to change sinful man into believing Christians.  It teaches us that The scattered by sin are united by the Spirit.

As I spoke of the nature of our world a few moments ago, you may have felt like I was accusing you of conspiring to disobey God and lead your neighbors astray.  However, we need to recognize that we inherited this nature from our fathers even if they are believers.  Sin pollutes each person from birth which will send us to hell if not cured by the work of the Holy Spirit through the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The natural knowledge of the law written in our hearts tells us God exists, but the corruption we inherited from our parents also had us under the control of the devil who would lead us into all kinds of sin.  So, corrupted by inheritance, we feel like we have the right to judge and rule our neighbors, even God, and we often want to build our own way to heaven, or at least our own way in life.  Even when we know the truth about God, salvation, and His heaven, it is still so very tempting to think, falsely, that we have to build at least part of our way there.  However, on our own, we can’t find a way to God or build a tower to His eternal home of glory.  That’s the lesson God wants us to learn at Babel. 

Today, mankind is scattered over the whole face of the earth.  Thousands of languages have been identified, and many more have come and gone in the intervening years since the events of our sermon text, but by the miracle at Pentecost, God showed us how He makes our salvation and eternal glory possible.  Throughout the last six months, we have been hearing how God has won salvation for mankind through the life and death of His Son, Jesus Christ, but the only way that will benefit anyone on this planet is if he hears the Good News and believes it.

Of course, there are always some who will tell you that you can find harmony with God on your own, and others would like to tell you that the Holy Spirit picks and chooses those He will save completely at random and there is nothing you or I can do to make a difference.  However, those are wicked men as deceived by Satan’s delusions as those in the plain of Shinar who wanted to rule their neighbors and make a name for themselves.

The truth is, through the Good News of Jesus, The scattered by sin are united by the Spirit.  Before He returned to His Father’s side in heaven, Jesus told His disciples, "Go and gather disciples from all nations by baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and by teaching them to keep all the instructions I have given you.” (Matthew 28:19-20)  Jesus also said, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever.  He is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it does not see him or know him.  You know him because he stays with you and will be in you.” (John 14:16-17)  The Bible also says, “God chose you from the beginning for salvation by the sanctifying work of the Spirit and faith in the truth.  For this reason he also called you through our gospel so that you would obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (2 Thessalonians 2:13-14)

Like those rebellious people in our sermon text, we needed God’s intervention.  We needed to hear the truth about our sinful nature so that we would know we needed a Savior.  We needed to hear about Jesus, and we needed a miracle to bring us to believe in Him as our Savior.  We couldn’t find Jesus on our own, for we were born dead in sin.  We were blind, lost and condemned creatures. 

Therefore, after paying the price for our sins on the cross while suffering our punishment and death, Jesus rose from the dead, then returned to His Father, and together, they send their Holy Spirit to work through the saving Gospel to enliven people like you and me, to give us the faith in Christ that will save us from hell and damnation.  Through the proclamation of the Gospel and the pouring on of water with the Word in Baptism, the Holy Spirit removed your dead heart and gave you life.  The Holy Spirit works in you just like He did that day almost two thousand years ago when He gave a bunch of weak disciples amazing gifts of speech, and just as important, the strength of faith to admonish their fellow Jews as sinners in need of salvation and then offer the Good News of Jesus’ death and resurrection to those stricken souls. 

Over three thousand convicted sinners had their hearts changed that day through the almighty power of the Holy Spirit working through the Gospel proclaimed by humble believers like you and me.  The disciples weren’t better Christians than we are.  They didn’t come up with extraordinary powers by some type of prayer or ritual.  They simply believed Jesus, and the Holy Spirit worked through their humble voices to share salvation and eternal life with other repentant sinners.

Though centuries have passed by, nothing has really changed in the Christian Church.  Oh yes, some enthusiastic groups will call us dead Christians, because we don’t all speak in some strange tongue, but those new Christians at Pentecost weren’t made believers by some strange unknown language.  Rather, they were blessed to hear the Gospel in their own native tongues just as you are.  God still desires that for us today; that we hear the Gospel unto salvation, that we believe it, and that there can be men who share the Good News of Jesus’ victory over sin and death in your neighbor’s native language so that in those lost sinners, the Holy Spirit can work eternal life and salvation in formerly dead hearts and thereby bring them back into unity with God and all His faithful people.

Dear friends, God uses the Gospel to bring us to life everlasting.  Draw near to God through the regular use of His Word and Sacrament, for by the Gospel in those means of grace, The scattered by sin are united by the Spirit.  All glory be to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting.  Amen.